Mitrial valve symptoms or something worse?

[oryan707]

Hello i'm a 29 yo healthy male with mild Mitrial Valve Prolapse. i've had some cardiac reactions to some benign perscription drugs. (motilium, losec, garamicine, xantral that apparently never cause such symtoms.)

SYMPTOMS:
The reactions include weakness in the exremities and light headedness, with my heart feeling very strained with occasional sharp painful beats. I get the urge to lye down in a fetal position to make my head+heart feel better. It just feels like my blood pressure is going down. These usualy last about 4-6 hours. I feel certain there is a physiological cause because i also have similar symptoms to having a drag of a cigarette, even though i spent years smoking without problems when i was younger. So something has changed.

After two ultra sounds all that was found is a 'slighty' enlarged left ventricle (only two percent off normal apparently) and 'mild' mitrial valve prolapse (MVP). The doctors keep telling me the MVP could not cause these symptoms.

Questions:

Is my doctor downplaying the relevance of the MVP? Because i've heard of people getting their valves replaced. Is it possible my valve regurgitation gets worse under specific conditions? Or does this sound like another condition?

Also: would another kind of test, such as a CAT SCAN-- pick up anything an Ultra sound might miss? Because i'm thinking of asking for one to get to the bottom of this.

Any info or links to info espescial medical journals would be awsome
Thank you for your time. Ryan

 

[JimL]

Hi Ryan and welcome. I don't know much about most of the things you write about. But about the ultrasound, or echocardiogram -- this is an easy test to go through as you know, non-invasive, but not all that definite. If indicated, there are several other tests that can be done that give a clearer picture of what's going on, but they become progressively more invasive. An angiogram/catheterization would be in that line, but it's much more invasive than an echo. Hope that helps.

 

[bvdr]

Hi Ryan,

Welcome to this forum. I think it would be very hard to guess at what is happening in your case. Have your doctors investigated the possibility of an arrhythmia causing some of your symptoms?

 

[doberman]

Hi Ryan,
I am not familiar with any of your symptoms either but what I can tell you is that yes your mitral valve can deteriorate over time. I was once told that although I had MVP my condition would not get any worse. Five years later I had my valve repaired. I walked around for several years feeling that somthing was not quite right with my health but nothing as specific as yours. You need to persist with your doctors to get to the cause of your problem. Have you seen a cardiologist? I am also from Canada (Toronto) get a referral to a cardiologist that specializes in congenital defects in adults and find out what the trouble is. If you have any questions about negotiating the health care system here I will be glad to help if I can.
Best John

 

[oryan707]

thanks guys

thanks guys

Hi i'm back, first to John D. yes i've seen 2 Cardiologists (i asked for a second opinion) who have done the ultra sounds described above, i don't know if any of them specialized in "congenital defects". But i'm glad you mentioned negotiating the system.

(For American readers, who might think the Canada health care system sounds like heaven, it isn't. Because the government pays for everything every one is unbeleivably cheap and you have to throw massive sucky-poos to get what you want. So don't beleive the hype.)

Tommorow i'm seeing my internist to ask for another chance at getting more investigations , i'll mention your suggestion and hope it works and let you know how it went. The big dilema right now is that my new family doctor has refered me to a cardiologist for the 10th of Feb. But this doctor seems to be very young and "unconnected" if you know what i mean. In fact hge turned out to be a horrible doctor and understand how easily i got into his practice. I think i would get a better cardiologist through my internist. So should i go with a cardio refered from the bottom of the food chain because i have it and it's soon or keep working on my internist who's been trying to resist the idea for 2 years? I guess i need something specific to ask for to change her mind.

Because i described all my probs to my other 2 cardio's (this was two years ago)and they rushed through the symptoms...did the echo...brushed everything off as irrelevant and said there was nothing wrong. They actually had someone else do the echo and then briefly skimmed at the report right at the top of our appointement. Maybe all this sounds familiar.

Did you you every get a cat-scan john?

ps. will ask about the arrhythmia thing at my apointement bvdr