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I think the main role for non N95 masks is to protect other people rather than yourself. A cloth mask may reduce the size of the cloud of aerosolised drops from breathing/coughing/sneezing. This will hopefully reduce the risk for the person next to you if you happen to be an asymptomatic...

Best wishes Protimenow. Sounds like you are surrounded by a team of experts who are going to sort this out.

I also read that article. It was interesting warranting further study but certainly not strong enough to change management yet. Maybe warfarin is helpful. A counter argument it that 1-2% of COVID patients cough up blood. Warfarin may be problematic for those people but maybe helpful for others...

That study will be interesting. Hopefully it has some results early enough to help with this outbreak. There is a thought that anticoagulation might be beneficial in serious COVID infection to try to prevent microemboli (small clots in small blood vessels of important organs such as heart and...

The studies that I have seen that look at risk factors for death from Covid 19 are from Wuhan China. They lump cardiovascular disease all together. I think that this mostly means coronary heart disease rather than valvular disease. Has anyone seen an article that separates types of heart disease?

Another factor that may have effect is the height of the finger in relation to the heart. Wounds bleed more when the body part is below the heart level (increases blood pressure and decreases venous drainage at the wound) and less when above the heart. This suggests lancing your finger at a low...

What an extremely difficult time.

I think that it is useful to look at the effect of the regurgitation on your heart. If the left ventricle volume and left ventricular end-systolic dimension (LVESD) are holding steady then heart is coping fine. If these parameters show a definite pattern of increasing then your heart is dilating...

Best wishes. Get well soon.

Sorry if my above post is rather confronting. The big majority of patients, including those with heart disease, do recover from covid 19. However, there is increased risk and we should take this seriously.

Hopefully warfarin does not effect the severity of covid 19 infection. I can see that it may be an additional complication for those who develop severe illness. Covid 19 is a respiratory illness but also attacks the heart. The Chinese data shows that 12% of covid patients have a raised troponin...

I agree, in the absence of symptoms (e.g. dizziness, faints) it is fine. A low heart rate gives the ventricle more time to fill so the amount of blood pushed forwards by every beat (stroke volume) is increased. The heart is amazing how it can adjust stroke volume to maintain cardiac output.

Big dose - you are obviously a big active unit! Anyone higher? (I’m 7mg daily)

I was told to take my warfarin in the evening. That makes sense for giving time to have a morning blood test and then get a clinic response in the afternoon. I changed to taking it in the morning because I self test and there is no delay getting a result. I can take medication more consistently...

That is difficult. To be prepared for surgery and then it is cancelled. It would not be good getting corona virus in the first 4 weeks postop when it is difficult to take a deep breath.

Sounds like they are stuffing around with your warfarin. The sooner that you can self-manage (with advice from Pellicle if needed) the sooner you avoid ”clinic” people who don’t really know what they are doing. Switching from 4mg to 12mg to stopping for days until INR drops, all sounds like over...

Congratulations. Great to hear that you are still so active.

I also felt a big improvement by 6 weeks. However, I did notice significant advances each week. Next week will hopefully be better than this week. The week after better again... I found sleeping became a lot easier around about 4 weeks. Better sleep also helped my energy levels.

I have a Medtronic mechanical aortic valve. Never hear it at the gym. Puffing drowns out any ticking. Music headphones drown out everything. Occasionally can hear it at night. The loudness does depend upon position. I find the valve quieter than the murmur that I could hear preop when in bed. I...

It is a difficult question with no obvious right or wrong. Do you go for a tissue valve that will hopefully last into your 70s and then have a TAVI which will hopefully last to your 90s, or do you go mechanical with hopefully only one intervention? The US, UK and Australian registry data show...