Has Mitral Valve Prolapse Repair fixed my Bradycardia (Low Heart Rate)?

[Still Ticking]

All,

I have had a relatively low heart rate most of my life which I attributed to good physical conditioning and lucky genetics. I am now 68 and recently had minimally invasive surgery to repair my mitral valve problem which I had to some extent all my life (I was born with a heart murmur). That was 9 1/2 weeks ago and I have been able to rebuild my physical endurance and conditioning to a reasonable extent. One thing I have noticed is my resting heart has increased significantly since prior to the surgery.

For a last 5 years since I began tracking it, my sleeping heart rate would fall down into the mid-40s. During the day it would increase and often be in the mid 50's at rest but it would respond appropriately when I exercised or exerted myself and I didn't notice any shortness of breath. An AFIB event was what triggered the tests which uncovered my mitral valve problem.

That said, since my valve repair surgery my heart rate seems to have settled down and is now averaging about 10 bmp higher throughout the day (much more in the normal range) than prior to the surgery. I did a quick internet search and found that some studies have indicated mitral valve prolapse is associated with bradycardia and am now wondering if repairing this valve will put me permanently back into the normal range with regards to heart rate. It will be a few more weeks before I get back into my old level of physical conditioning, but I will be surprised if it drops much lower.

Just wondering if anyone else on this forum experienced the same sort of thing.

 

[Zoltania]

Your higher heart rate may be a temporary effect of the surgery. There was a recent discussion of this here:

Tachycardia

 

[Woodcutter]

Yes but . . . .

I'll first offer that I believe (and my experience was) that it takes 6 to 12 months for the rate to stabilize. Hence, I would not draw any conclusions at 10 weeks. Maybe it has adjusted . . .maybe not.

Having said that, I had my mitral regurgitation corrected a decade ago at the age of 50. I am a lifetime runner and have always attributed my relatively low resting heart rate to that cardiac adaptation. Today, when asked, I generally share that my resting heart rate is about 10 bpm higher after the surgery. I'm usually in the low 50's now vs. the low 40's a decade ago prior to surgery. I had an ablation for atrial flutter a few years ago. I could 'sense' that my rate was low. I'm not sure how else to describe it because it was not troublesome. However, when I measured it was about 30. It actually only bothered me during exercise because, like when I had previously had atrial fibrillation, my rate was higher than expected.