Time for a valve job?

On Friday I went to the University Hospital for an echocardigram and stress test.  When I got there, instead of going to the room on the 2nd floor where I’ve had this procedure before,  they took me over to the ABACUS Research Centre which is part of the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute. I found out that I was going to have a new test – in fact I was to be only the third person to have it on their new equipment.

Typically, for an echo/stress test doctors  do an echocardiogram to see the heart’s function at rest, then the patient exercises on a treadmill or stationary cycle (while having a constant electrocardiogram), and finally the patient lies down and has another echocardiogram to show the heart’s performance immediately after exercise.

The advantage of the new test is that it compares the performance of your heart at rest to the performance of your heart during exercise, as well as after exercise.

So I was hooked up to an electrocardiogram, and strapped onto a bed with a cycle on the bottom.  The reason I was strapped on was because the bed tilts to allow the technician to do the echocardiogram while you are pedaling! Talk about contortions!

First they did the at rest echocardiogram. My cardiologist was particularly concerned about the function of my bicuspid aortic valve and wanted to get a good sense of how well it was functioning before going ahead with the rest of the test.  The result – borderline severe but good to go with the test!

They increased the resistance on the cycle every few minutes and monitored my heart rate. Meanwhile, they kept getting ultrasound photos of the heart in action via the echocardiogram.

It was a very  interesting experience. My cardiologist’s initial assessment is that we’re good to keep on keeping on for now…he needs to have a more in depth review of the images and the data but on first blush things seem to be quite good despite the borderline severe aortic stenosis. No valve job for me for now!

Yay!