High Blood Pressure after Valve Replacement

[heliberman]

Hi:

This is my first since since my heart valve replacement. I had a aortic pig valve surgery 16 months ago. The valve failed because of stenosis. It was replaced four weeks ago with a mechanical Regent St. Jude valve. Since the surgery I have been experiencing elevated blood pressure. Before the surgery my blood pressure was in the normal range. I m treating the blood pressure issue with medicine. Has anyone else had a similar experience??

Thanks

 

[acr]

I guess you're out of condition post surgery. With cardiac rehab and exercise I bet it will come down.

 

[NealR]

I too had elevated blood pressure out of surgery, and at least for the next few months. It did go down, eventually.

Do you think this has more to do with the heart pumping more blood? With a new valve, does this mean there is more blood circulating and more blood going into our arteries? If this is the case, does this mean that the body just needs time to adjust to this?

Since more blood is being squeezed out (pumped), because of the new valve (two valves in my case), could this actually be a good thing?

Curious to know other responses. I am meeting with my cardio in a couple of weeks and pose the same questions.

 

[Lynlw]

Sorry to hear your pig valve needed replaced so soon. What kind was it, mossaic etc? I'm not sure why your BP is higher now, but in the beginning when the heart is remolling sometimes alot of weird things happen with pressure rythyms that hopefully will improve with more time. Welcome to VR BTW

 

[heliberman]

Thanks for the feedback. The pig valve that failed was a Mosaic from Medtronic. The blood pressure is beginning to go down, but it is still in the high range. I have started back exercising at my gym.

 

[ElectLive]

Both my heart rate and blood pressure were elevated short term after surgery and did normalize gradually with time. My medication (beta blocker) was identical pre and post surgery, so it was easy for me to see the difference the surgery made. It doesn't affect everyone, but when it happens, it pretty consistently returns to normal within a few months.

So sorry to hear about your Mosaic valve. There seem to have been more than a few early failures mentioned here for the Mosaic. I am not at all familiar with any of the individual cases, or if there has been any similarity in circumstances, but obviously it's pretty disconcerting. I do hope your recovery is otherwise going well, welcome to the community, and best wishes for continued improvement.

 

[Glen Swan]

This is similar to my son's CoA (coarctation of the aorta) who also has BaV. One of the conditions is high blood pressure because coarctation refers to basically stenosis, but more specifically to the aorta. It's narrowing and causing the high blood pressure from what I was explained. Even though my son had surgery and it was successful on his aorta to fix his coartation (CoA), he still had high blood pressure. This like others have said is temporary.

I would bet you anything, that your stenosis from the previous valve is the reason for the high blood pressure. It's still a major blood restriction from that stenosis and now you have that fixed, your body has to adjust to the new increase blood flow to your body. That can cause high blood pressure temporarily until your body adjusts to the new blood flow. From previous posts in this forum, some have had it up to 3 months or longer.

Back on my Son's condition, he had a narrowing in has aorta, but it was fixable by surgery with cutting out the narrow part and piecing to two leftover ends back together. The docs said this likely will cause higher BP after the surgery due to the increase blood flow, but they were unsure if it would happen. It of course happened and they much like others have experience, do not know exactly why other than it's increased blood flow through the valve that is now open and in almost all cases resolves itself over time. How much time? It's different for everyone. My son is currently taking one dose of meds a day to control his BP and we are hoping to get off it soon. If not, one dose to control his BP a day is fine for me.

 

[normofthenorth]

Did you ever get any explanation for the way-too-fast failure of your pig valve, or did they just wave their hands and say things like "stuff happens", "nobody knows", "luck of the draw", type thing? Did you have an experienced surgeon in a big center with a solid record?