Cozaar / Rehab / Accuracy

Posted By Bill on June 09, 1998 at 15:12:22:







My wife Kathy (34 year old) was diagnosed with Left Ventricular dysfunction 11 months ago ago with an EF of 45 - 50%.
Last week an echocaridiagram showed an EF of 30 - 35%. A follow up MUGA put her EF at 37%, with LV wall contractility and considerable cardiac rhythm abnormality.
LV sizes were measured at 5.2 and 3.9 cm, 11 months ago. Today measurements are 5.4 and 4.0 cm
Presently this is being diagnosed as dilated cardiomyopathy, physical symptoms are fatique and loss of appetite.
Treatment for the first 11 months was Acupril which was changed to 50 mg of Cozaar, once a day, due to severe cough.
Current treatment (as of last week) is 3.125 mg of Coreg twice a day along with 50 mg Cozaar twice a day (doubled). Plan is to further increase Coreg dosage?
In your forum I see that you recommend Zestril over Cozaar, should we switch? What are the side effects of Zestril?
I also see mention of supervised cardiac rehabilitation programs in your forum.  What is a cardiac rehabilitation program? Is this something we should look into.
Is there any other treatment strategy we should be pursuing?
What is the signficance to the .2cm growth in th LV?
Why the difference in readings between the echocardiagram and the MUGA? do we go with the 30 - 35%, or 37%? Is the decrease over 11 months 8% or 20%?
Presently the next course of action is to do another echocardiagram in 12 months ... this seems like a long time given the recent decline. When would you recommend conducting the next test?
It is comforting to see the positive results sited within your forum, we are hoping this will be the case for Kathy. But if the decline continues, where to we go from there?
Any questions that you can answer would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks,
Bill