Could this be Angina!
Posted , 2 users are following.
Hello, I am 53 and female. I have been seeing my heart consultant for a couple of years now as I am having trouble with my heart. I was born with very mild Pulmonary stenosis that doesn't affect me in any way. They have also found that one side of my heart is a bit stiff so doesn't pump the blood out as good as it could but again this is mild. My heart dr can find no reason as to why my heart beats so fast, why I suddenly come over feeling very ill for no reason at all... I have to lay down and its such a terrible feeling of being ill I just can't explain it but its horrible and I have to just rest until it passes which can be hours!
Also If I eat a heavy meal, or if I go to a restaurant and have a meal and a glass of wine, I can barely walk afterwards as the discomfort is so bad, I can't breathe because i'm so breathless and my heart feels like its actually being crushed, and my heart races wildly, after one meal one evening I took myself off to hospital because my heart was just under 180bpm and I thought I was going to collapse, but still no one knows why it does this. I was kept in Resus as they were so concerned I was about to have a big problem I.E. heart attack or cardiac arrest....I can't remember what they said.
Now I've started to experience this awful chest discomfort when I'm excited ( how ridiculous) or if i'm worried/scared. Its a bad discomfort in the main heart area, spreads to the middle of my chest and goes through to my back sometimes, it is also below the left breast. I come over really tired, weak and I feel a bit breathless only if I get up and exert myself. It goes on for an hour or two, I just again have to lay back in my recliner chair and wait for it to pass. I am now wondering if I have angina! My heart dr says there is nothing else wrong with my heart apart from what ive wrote above....she feels the fast heart is because I'm unfit ( I don't get any symptoms on exertion ). My mother had angina in her 40's onwards and so does my nephew in his early 30's.....I know something is wrong because of the dreadful way I feel when I get these symptoms, but as I said some days I just suddenly come over really unwell, with a heavy heart feeling but not the chest discomfort I get when I'm excited etc, its so hard to explain but its all coming from the heart area. How can I argue my case if my heart dr has done lots of tests and says there's nothing else wrong. I'm left here feeling like crap.
0 likes, 3 replies
samuels honeybea
Posted
Hi,
Have you been checked for pulmonary embolisms ? these can give off those kind of symptoms as well, text book symptoms usually are chest pain , breathlessness and most times it hurts to breath. The reason I ask this is because you mentioned pulmonary stenosis, this condition can obstruct blood flow from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery. Also PE's can put a lot of strain on the right side of the heart giving off the symptoms you have described.
Your description also does fit in with angina or some different kinds of heart conditions, yet your cardiologist has given you the all clear in that department ?
honeybea samuels
Posted
Hi Samuels.....I have had these symptoms for about 4 yeas now apart from the chest discomfort on excitement which has been about 1 year so it can't be a PE. Strangely enough 3 years ago I was suddenly taken very ill and couldn't breathe and it turned out to be a PE and they never found a cause for it! I think because my stenosis is so mild they tend not to take any notice of it. Yes my heart consultant has done lots of tests and said i'm fine apart from this mild stiffness of one side of my heart, but would angina show up in tests, I had an exercise test done on a bike but I don't get any symptoms on exertion though. Chest xray, echo, tape machine and some kind of ct or mri scan. Can you spot angina on tests or is it diagnosed via the symptoms.
samuels honeybea
Posted
Hi honeybee,
It's a touch and go with tests, generally with stable angina when there is plaque build up and exercise or walking up a slight incline or a flight of stairs they can generally say with confidence that you have angina, then there is unstable angina which is different in the terms of it can be bought on with no exertion or even wake you from your sleep, high emotional stress, cold weather or a quick puff of wind to the face, even extreme heat can trigger this sort of angina, prinzmetal angina falls into this category, PM has various terms nowadays, CAS ( coronary artery spasms ) Vasospasms and although slightly different syndrome X.
I am coming into 6 months of pulmonary embolisms caused by a DVT, I as well as my GP were treating my calf muscle as a strained muscle and it wasn't improving, now I have been diagnosed as having prinzmetal angina, it did start off as the small blood vessels in the heart going into spasms but as time went on and after having a mild heart attack a cardiologist concurred with the emergency doctor that I was suffering from prinzmetal angina. Just on 6 months ago tomorrow actually I had to go to our emergency department with my angina pain, the triage nurse was actually more worried about my leg, as it was hot to touch, red and swollen, I was seen straight away and tests were done and the D dimer blood test came back positive for blood clots so a contrast dye CT scan was done and they found heaps of blood clots in both lungs, I experienced the symptoms that you have mentioned, with the exception of " excitement " as a trigger and just put it down to my angina, I didn't have at that time the " text book " symptoms of a PE and that's what made it hard for the doctors, if it wasn't for a switched on triage nurse god knows where I'd be today.
There is a test for prinzmetal angina, it involves an angiogram and a provocative agent injected into your coronary arteries, if your arteies start to spasm and they can quickly reverse it with the GTN infusion they can confidently say you have prinzmetal angina, however where I am this test isn't performed due to it's high incident/mortality rate. I have had a couple of cardiologists tell me that your arteries will spasm upon insertion of the catheter anyrate, it does this because it has , to the artery. a foreign object in it. the best way to describe it would be like someone rubbing lightly a feather up and down your arm, what does your arm automatically do, it quivers and gives off a tickling sensation, that's what some doctors and cardiologists opinions are, that it wouldn't be an accurate test because our bodies will do strange things automatically with out a provocative agent, and some also think along the lines that if the medication is a provocative agent of course your arteries are going to spasm, if you understand what I'm trying to say ? . I have to settle with the symptoms diagnosis because as I said they don't perform this test where I am " apparently "