heart health

[jeri58]

I am a 50-year-old female with mild aortic valve insufficiency.  Lately, I have been getting slight chest pains and my heart races out of control.  I do not have acid reflux disease.I have been known to have a resting heart rate between 100-150 bpm, and last year, my heart stopped for a second and then started to beat erratically.  My lips have been getting blue with exercise and my pulse ox is normal  There is strong heart disease in my family,  Nobody can figure this out, and they say it is not coming from the heart.  I have been getting worse since April and last month, my blood pressure was 189/105 which has never happened and I have started to run a low-grade fever again..  I am on medicine for my pressure.  Any clues?

[Michael J. McWilliams, M.D.]

If they have done a full cardiac work up (stress test, echocardiogram, EKG, history and physical) and can't find a cardiac cause, they are probably right.  Are other people observing your lips turning blue as well?  That is a strange symptom and is usually assoiciated with decreased blood oxygen saturation.  One thing that could do that is methemaglobinemia.  that is a condition when your hemaglobin stays in an un oxygenated state due to a chemical change -- it would require a blood test to check.  An exercise stress test with oxygensaturations would also clarify whether your oxygen sats are dropping.  I am not sure how to put the whole picture to together though -- it sounds complicated.

I hope this helps.

[jeri58]

My O2 saturation has been normal during these episodes.  Sometimes I get blue right away and other times it takes awhile.  I had the first episode in November where I became quite cyanotic, and then it went away for awhile.  Then it started again in April when my friends first noticed it, but they did not say anything since they did not want to scare me.  In May I went for presurgical testing, and the nurses noticed it as well and it has not really gone away.    After the surgery, my 02 level was 91% after I came off the oxygen.  I had an exercise stress test last October where they injected medicine to mimic exercise, but this was before all this happened and everything was okay.  Also, at times, when I wake up in the morning, my heart feels like a race horse, and at other times, my breathing becomes very diminished.  Also, I was on an exercise bicycle last week and it monitored my heart rate----it went from 50bpm to 102 bpm very fast, but lately my heart rate has been going up and down like a yo yo for no reason.  The dr. in the hospital said the rapid heart beat could be coming from the aortic valve since it has to work harder. Is this true? Could there be some underlying heart condition that is not manifesting itself?  I have had an EKG which sometimes shows sinus tachycardia, and skipped beats, and a few months ago I had one that said abnormal (possible enlarged left ventricle), but nothing showed on a chest x-ray or echcardiogram other than the aortic valve insufficiency, but I don't feel well.  I was not born with this.  A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a heart murmur when a dr. listened to my chest.  I was shocked since nothing was mentioned before.  As a child, I had several bouts of strep throat, but it was always caught in time, or so I thought.

[kat4]

Hi,

I'm just a layperson, but here are my two cents

I was asking about shortness of breath and a respiratory specialist told me to have my hemoglobin checked. If it is low due to an anemia, the oxygen measurements can be artificially higher than they actually are, and so can mask low oxygen.  The fix is to fix the anemia.

Iron deficiency can cause blue lips.

Has your cardiologist talked about a med, such as a beta blocker, to address the skipped beats (ectopics)?

(In my case the shortness of breath was due to too much beta blocker, it's a double edged sword.  If the med you are  for BP is beta blocker, maybe that is causing the problem.)

Has your doctor checked out the low grade fever?