aobauer
New member
I was wondering if anyone else has experience with what's happening with me after my mitral valve repair. Immediately prior to the surgery, I was able to run for 30 minutes at a pace between 8 and 9mph. I had been completely asymptomatic (murmur during physical lead to all the rest of the tests), but the guideline given my situation was for early surgery before symptoms actually appeared. My recovery after the surgery last April wasn't as I had hoped, but I'd frequently heard you shouldn't expect to be back to normal before a year. Though I was experiencing fairly extreme lightheadedness during exercise and wasn't able to progress beyond 5mph for 30 minutes, a echo stress test over the summer found nothing. Though I continued to feel like I hit a wall at 5mph, my lightheadedness got better.
It turns out the doctor just didn't work me out enough on the stress test. In December a more difficult repeat (I had been complaining about not progressing) found that I had systolic anterior motion, but only when my heart rate was very elevated. I know SAM isn't an uncommon outcome of mitral valve repair, but my cardiologist couldn't find any reference to it just occurring when exercising (I can't either). They do seem to understand why it's happening- when the heart beats faster, the pressure increases more on one side than the other, which like a plane's wing pulls the flap back into the chamber. End result is my blood pressure doesn't go up when I exercise hard.
The proposed solution was beta blockers, which would increase the size of the heart when the blood is pumping. The increased size would reduce the pressure, which would change the point at which SAM would occur. We started out at a half dose, and I actually can now go a bit faster for a long period of time (maybe 6mph for 30 minutes). Any time I sprint for more than a second or two however, I basically shut down and get really tired. Which means I can't keep up with my 6 year old son when we try to play sports together. I'm going to try a whole dose again, but the first time I did a few weeks ago it made me feel pretty bad (more lightheadedness walking up stairs for example). I'm not terribly hopeful it will work.
As I can't find any reference anywhere, I was wondering if someone here has experienced something similar and can share thoughts. Reading the community here has been really helpful over the months. I've wanted to post before, but as you can see I tend to write a lot.
It turns out the doctor just didn't work me out enough on the stress test. In December a more difficult repeat (I had been complaining about not progressing) found that I had systolic anterior motion, but only when my heart rate was very elevated. I know SAM isn't an uncommon outcome of mitral valve repair, but my cardiologist couldn't find any reference to it just occurring when exercising (I can't either). They do seem to understand why it's happening- when the heart beats faster, the pressure increases more on one side than the other, which like a plane's wing pulls the flap back into the chamber. End result is my blood pressure doesn't go up when I exercise hard.
The proposed solution was beta blockers, which would increase the size of the heart when the blood is pumping. The increased size would reduce the pressure, which would change the point at which SAM would occur. We started out at a half dose, and I actually can now go a bit faster for a long period of time (maybe 6mph for 30 minutes). Any time I sprint for more than a second or two however, I basically shut down and get really tired. Which means I can't keep up with my 6 year old son when we try to play sports together. I'm going to try a whole dose again, but the first time I did a few weeks ago it made me feel pretty bad (more lightheadedness walking up stairs for example). I'm not terribly hopeful it will work.
As I can't find any reference anywhere, I was wondering if someone here has experienced something similar and can share thoughts. Reading the community here has been really helpful over the months. I've wanted to post before, but as you can see I tend to write a lot.