Severe shortness of breath when is it an emergency?

I should add that they also doubled my mother's water tablets to try and ease the fluid that has gathered on her lungs.  Still no sign of improvement yet though so I am wondering when should I intervene and take her to hospital?

Yes, hospital. Af carries with it the danger of stroke. Most of us worry about the clot going to the brain, but they can possibly clog things up most anywhere. Pulmonary emboli for instance give symptoms similar to those you describe. Shortness of breath in af is often associated with exertion but not so often at rest. So, hospital.

If you take your mother to hospital she will probably have to wait in a queue. Call an ambulance.

Thank you for the response. She tells me if she sits down and doesn't move she is much better but if she attempts to move it is much worse.  She has an emergency call button round her neck that if she presses will send an ambulance but she is very wary of using it as she doesn't want to waste their time!  I think it is her AF and lung fluid build up causing the breathlessness and her doubling of water pills etc should help it's just taking its time.  I have persuaded her to call her GP when it re-opens tomorrow morning first thing for an emergency appointment so they can check her blood oxygen levels.  She isn't keen for me to go charging over there and take her to hospital at this stage.  So difficult to do what's right when I don't know myself.

Hi Fran,

I agree with others hospital,you don't say what water tablet they have given her but if its Djoxin it wants looking at

If you are in England dial 111 and ask for advice, if not get her an ambulance better to be safe than sorry. in my experience its usually the people who genuinely need them that don't like to worry them.

L.

Definitely get her to hospital. Or, if she presses the alam button around her neck they will send an ambulance. I had to do this once and the ambulance crew which responded were absolutely marvellous. In my case I didn't need to be taken to the hospital on that occasion but they said I did the right thing in calling them. 

Definitely hospital ASAP.

Also, yes call an ambulance so she doesn't have wait hours in a queue

Also, once she gets past this, a low sodium diet will really helps reduce the fluid retention.

i was on fluid tablets initially when I had heart failure(And AF). The problem was that because my left ventricle was severely enlarged, it wasn't  pumping blood to the rest of my body very well and caus Ingrid it to 'back up' at my lungs, which in turn was causing fluid to collect in my lungs.

Also when the heart is not pumping well, organs tend not to work as well as they should. 

My kidneys weren't excreting salt from my body like they should have been, so my body would retain fluid in an attempt to maintain it's osmotic balance, which in turn places further strain on the heart(bit of a vicious cycle really!)

A low sodium diet was very frustrating and difficult at first, looking at the labelling foods showed that just about everything had too much salt in it and the weekly grocery shopping took forever! But after several weeks I managed to find substitutes for all the high sodium foods in my diet. 

There are low sodium recipe books etc.

But at 76 I suspect your mother, like mine(who has lived in permanent AF for the last 15years and was recently admitted with serious heart failure and viral pneumonia/fluid on lungs etc.) won't change their dietary habits at their age.

Good luck with it all

 

My mom went through the exact same symptoms as you describe for yours. Mine is 82, and has had kidney failure for over a year. She stopped the Amiodarone that seemed to give her all kinds of side effects (memory loss, shortness of breath, sleepy, tired, slow, poor balance, and a deep/raspy voice). I've heard it can even cause blindess. We finally stopped it after after she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, with a TSH of 152. Since stopping the amiodarone (symptoms are more pronounced in kidney patients) and starting her on levothyroxine for her thyroid, she has already started feeling better. It will be months before she will start to actually feeling like she has more energy, but I credit her ENT for suspecting a thyroid problem when I asked why she snores and has a deep voice.