heart disease at 29?

[nea80]

im a 29 year old female. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol in my early 20's. I was recently sent to a cardiologist for minor chest pain and he did an ecg that came back abnormal with myocardial ischemia. Im now scheduled for a stress test next week. Heres my question can someone my age really have heart disease?

[ed34]

Hi Nea,
            I'm really sorry to hear of your illness, I thought I was young having a bypass at 46. That was 5 years ago, and now 10 stents later my arteries are clearer than they've been in many years. I too had high blood pressure and cholesterol from a young age, and we likely started to develop disease in our late teens. I know bypass sounds real scary, I know it petrified me, I nearly jumped off the trolley a few times when being wheeled to the operating theatre. I was shaking so much I thought I was going to have a seizure. If you need to ask what to expect, then please don't hesitate to ask, we are all here for you, and a few of us have been through it. I hope they've put you on the appropriate medications, such as aspirin, beta blockers and statins. If you want some advice, when you see your surgeon, ask him not to use veins unless he can really help it. Ask him to use arteries for grafting, especially your internal mammary arteries (lima and rima). Arteries last much much longer, and your age really requires this. I had 2 veins used from my legs, and the Lima from my chest. 3 months later the veins collapsed, but 5 years later the lima is still fully open.

[nea80]

I dont think i have th option of not getting the surgery if i want to live lol. As for my blood pressure its normal except for occasional spikes but when i was diagnosed it was extremely high avg 200-120

[justanumber]

nea,are you going to get the quadruple bypass? it is awful to need that at age 29. how high does your blood pressure get?

[nea80]

Only lasted 1 min in stress test. They looked at my ecg ran over listened to my heart and stopped the test. They sent me to get a heart cath and found extensive coronary heart disease. Told me i have had 2 prior heart attacks and need a quadruple bypass. They said it was severe hypertensive heart disease and that my blood pressure and cholesterol had to have been very high most of my life which cause the artery damage and disease.

[nea80]

I did not know that. I do have family history of heart disease. My test is tomorrow and I will post results

[Paderla Anitha, DNB]

Hello and hope you are doing well.

Myocardial ischemia does not commonly occur at your age. But with the high risk factors and if there is a strong family history it can occur. In the Framingham Heart Study, the incidence of an MI over a 10-year follow-up was 12.9/1000 in men 30 to 34 years old and 5.2/1000 in women 35 to 44 years old. In two series of patients with CHD at ≤40 years of age, women comprised 5.6 and 11.4 percent of patients.

Hope this helped and do keep us posted.