how bad is smoking for a BAV?

[marge77]

my partner is starting to smoke again and has a bicuspid aortic valve. he had surgery as a 2 year old and will need it again fairly soon i believe. he has exams every year and they keep telling him to wait, though he has some leakage and some enlargement of muscles in the heart. i don´t have the results in front of me, but that is the jist.
how much damage will smoking now do? what can i tell him by way of warning?
thanks in advance.

 

[Ross]

I'm sure there is no scientific data on this one. Smoking is not a good thing no matter what, but I doubt that it's doing any more harm, other then the extra heart stress, that nicotine does to ones body.

 

[carista]

As far as I know (and I'm not a dr.) It is much more harmful to smoke if he also has an aortic aneurysm. I've found out that if you smoke with an aneurysm it increases your chance of dissection by 25%. If he doesn't have an aneurysm nevermind, but my fiance and I just quit about 6 months ago and I thought I was going to have a much harder time with it than I did. If you/he want any advice on quitting smoking feel free to pm me and I'll help as much as I can. Obviously, either way it's best if he quits. Good Luck!

Carista

 

[PJmomrunner]

Carista: Congratulations to you and your boyfriend for quitting. I have not ever smoked, but people I love have smoked and quit. I know it is difficult.

Marge: The correlation between bicuspid aortic valves and aneurysms is well-documented enough that anything your friend does to further compromise the condition of his arteries can reasonably be expected to worsen his prognosis. Smoking directly damages the arteries with poison and by raising blood pressure. Even if he doesn't have an aneurysm, he should certainly refrain from increasing his already higher risk of having one in the future. Smoking also makes your partner more succeptible to infection, including staph or strep infections that can cause endocarditis and a possible swift downhill slide.

http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/health-info/docs/0300/0384.asp