54% LVEF: anything to worry about?

[ssechit]

I'm a 33yr male, just had an echocardiogram last week.  Reason I did that was because had a bit of a weak heart when I was a kid (could not run more than 3 minutes without feeling a very pressurized heart) and recently when swimming felt a tight chest so what the heck just went for an echocardiogram.

Result showed everything is normal.  But I noticed the LVEF came up as 54% (actually 53.6% if doing the math myself).  An old report of mine when I was 19 showed LVEF to be 59%.  Should I be worried about this decrease for from the age of 19 to 33?  My understanding is that LVEF would not drop with aging so could it mean that some of my heart muscle got damaged over the past 14 years?  I did smoke one pack of light cigarette per day for like 10 years but in recent years reduced a lot to like one pack per month......  Never a heavy drinker though.

I exercise moderately twice a week nowadays.  Would more frequent and heavier exercising help to bring back a few percents of my LVEF?

Thanks a lot in advance for your comments!

[ssechit]

Thanks for your advices!

[skydnsr]

Agree with the others that it could be a random variation.  Echo results are always estimated results and not exact.  Also agree with Flycaster that there is no safe level of tobacco use.

[updownleftright]

My EF have varied from 50-65% and this was when I was exercising rigorously 6 days a week. It really does depend on a lot of things. Simple things like heart rate can affect it, but also the machine and technician performing the echo as well. Either way 50 is no where near worrisome.

[Flycaster305]

I'm not a health professional, but have had a lot of recent heart tests, and my EF numbers vary about 5% between tests.  I wouldn't worry about it.

Based on my experience with smoking cigarettes, I'd urge you to stop.