Circulation and heart disease. H. Stanbro
The Doctors
I have an artificial aortic heart valve (Medtronic), and
recently was
diagnosed with mitral valve stenosis, prolapse and regurgitation.
According to my cardiologist, I
will eventually need to have the mitral valve replaced. The
surgeon was
less committed. When I was a around 1 1/2 yrs I was diagnosed with
aortic stenosis at
birth. Now the doctors believe I also had rheumatic fever which caused
the mitral valve to be defective. Recently I went into
congestive heart
failure, but am
supposedly over that. I have two questions. 1. Can this heart
disease be
the cause of my face and eyes being swollen? My eyes are always
swollen and puffy.
Taking Lasix helps. 2. Both my arms and hands fall asleep at
night and
are very painful. This wakes me up several times through the the night
and even causes me
trouble during waking hours. My right arm is the worse during waking
hours. It feels weak and numb quite often. Can this also be a
result of my
heart condition?
Answer
The facial edema certainly sounds like heart failure, and
the fact that a
diuretic helps it makes me even more suspicious. The upper extremity
numbness could be due to a heart problem, I suppose, but it
could also be
due to degenerative arthritis or a disk problem in the neck at
about C7.
Sleep posture can put more pressure there, resulting in the
trouble at
night, and activities that require certain positions of the neck (driving,
reading, sewing, washing dishes are the ones that do it for me)
may cause
the daytime problem. Since you know that you have heart valve
dysfunction and probably lifelong heart damage from rheumatic
fever, it
is always tempting to attribute all weird symptoms to that, but other
things could be going on at the same time. You don't give your
age, but
if you are relatively young, I would encourage you to consider
getting the
valve replacement just for quality-of-life reasons, if your
doctors think it
advisable.
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