Dr. Julia G. Ansari

Unfortunately, that area is inflamed from the bad cough and it will take sometimes months to recover. There is really not much you can do. Drinking hot tea or hot drinks makes it feel better, but you just have to wait until inflammation is resolved.

If you have a family history of premature coronary artery disease, exertional chest pain or shortness of breath could indicate presence of coronary disease and if that's the case, you need a stress test. If your chest pain is positional or not exertional and sharp and of short duration, most likely not coronary disease. Acid reflux also can give chest pain.

I don't know which other blood thinner are you comparing Xarelto with. The dosing depends on your kidney function. 20 mg is the dose given to patients with normal kidney function. If your kidney function is not normal and you are on the 20 mg dose, that may increase risk of bleeding. The formulation has not changed recently.

The guideline is suggesting after a heart attack whether you get a stent or not you you should take aspirin and a medication such as plavix for a minimal of one year. Plavix is anti platelet and not a blood thinner like coumadin. However from a different mechanism from the usual blood thinner it also makes you to be more prone to bleeding by preventing platelets to stick to each other to form a clot. Depends on the surgeon that does the operation they may want you to stop plavix 5 days prior to surgery. You should consult with your cardiologist.

Running is not bad for the heart. If a patient is known to have severe blockage of the arteries of the heart and did not have stent or open heart surgery and they continue running that can put them at risk, but it does not sound like your condition. Also patient's that have large aortic or abdominal aneurysm and they refuse surgery and continue exercising or running or at risk of rupture. if by cutting down salt, carbohydrate, soda, junk food and exercise your blood pressure remains >140 systolic , it could be genetic or aging (arteries get stiffer) and you will need medication

Depending on which location in the brain suffered from a stroke people have various degree of deficit. She would benefit from physical therapy to work on weight training on upper and lower ext. A physical therapist can assess what is her main deficit and tailor the exercise to strengthen that muscle group.

Most of the abdominal or thoracic aneurysm can have underlying college vascular disease, bicuspid aortic valve with aortopathy, patient's with poorly controlled Blood pressure and smokers all have a higher risk of developing it. males >60 years old who have been smoker at some point in their life should get an abdominal us to assess for size aneurysm and depending on the underlying medical condition surgery is recommended at different sizes of aneurysm for them. Usually patient have no symptoms to be warned about having one, but if someone has known to have aneurysm that are large and all of a sudden they get back pain and blood pressure drops that could be a sign of ruptured aneurysm. It is very important these patient's have optimal blood pressure control and have regular follow up imaging so they can have elective surgery when it gets to the critical size.

Before assuming this is vasovagal you want to see a cardiologist and get an echo to rule out structural heart disease , have a holter and possibly a tilt table to rule out there is no arrhythmia. Females with smaller body habitues who don't eat or drink are more at risk. This is due to activation of vagus nerve that gets activated due to emotional stress, pain, blood or other stimuli. The activation of this nerve causes the heart rate to slow down and drops the blood pressure . When the blood pressure drops and specially if you are standing you don't get enough blood flow to the the brain and you start getting dizzy and passing out would be a protective mechanism because it brings you down to the gravity so now you can get the blood flow to the brain and not fighting the gravity. if you have veins that are not competent that may make the situation worse. I would recommend keeping yourself well hydrated and eating a small meal every two hours so starvation or dehydration dont activate your vagus nerve.

Medications are not as useful as ablation for AVNRT. Ablation would be the only way to terminate tachycardia. It is not a dangerous procedure and most electrophysiologists are able to terminate this rhythm the first time they do the procedure as compared to other tachycardia. Depending of how close the pathway is to the AV node, there is a risk of complete heart block and need for permanent pacemaker, but this rarely happens. I suggest you proceed with ablation.

Not directly, but if patient has gum disease and infection, it can enter the blood and causes bacteremia and endocarditis (the valve of the heart can get infected) which would be a dangerous situation and needs to be dealt with antibiotics and in some cases, surgery. The dental plaque has no correlation with plaque in the heart.

For mitral valve, you prefer mitral valve repair to not disturb the structure, but it all depends on calcification and the tissue. If the valve is heavily calcified, it may not be reparable and only when the surgeon opens you up, they know what is your best option. Aortic valve mostly have to be replaced unless there was an infection of the valve that caused leakage and in some cases, the surgeon may be able to repair that.

If the burden of PVC (when you do a holter, they can estimate the burden of PVC) is >35% and you develop cardiomyopathy (heart failure) due to excessive beats, it is time to try to eliminate and attempt another ablation.

X-ray is not accurate for diagnosis of enlarged heart and mistakenly calls a lot of the hearts enlarged. First, you need an echo of your heart and most of the enlarged hearts with heart failure actually don't need surgery, it is only if the heart failure and enlarged heart is due to severe three vessel coronary disease or severe valvular heart disease that you need surgery. So before you worry about it, start with an echo.

Only time will tell if you will gain complete strength back or not. The more physical therapy you do and keep practicing holding objects and squeezing balls with that hand, more chance of recovery.

There is no way any surgery or procedure or anything in life can be 100% safe. We look at risk factors and symptoms prior to clearing someone for surgery so you do have one risk factor which is your family history. But if you don't have diabetes, kidney disease, poorly controlled hypertension, and other risk factors and you are someone active and have no other symptoms, you are considered low risk and don't need any other workup.

Even patients that are moderate or high risk and have a normal stress test can have a spontaneous plaque rupture during surgery, which is impossible to predict, so can anyone be 100% safe? No, but if due to hip pain you are not mobile and quality of life is compromised, then you are putting yourself in a worse place.

Anybody with history of coronary artery disease and previous heart attack, history of stents or open heart surgery should take chest pain seriously. The location is not always on the left side and it can be on the right side or in the back. If it is worsen with exertion, it is time for you to see your cardiologist for either a stress test or cardiac catheterization depending on your other history and symptoms. If it is worse after eating a heavy meal it could be acid reflux. If it is similar to your symptoms prior to previous heart attack I would urge you to see a cardiologist.

first you need to see how fast is the heart rate and if it is regular or irregular. A holter can answer that. Other conditions such as hyperthyroidism, anemia, infection can also raise the heart rate

yes it is possible to not hear the murmur and still have mitral prolapse. In the past they used to over diagnose mitral valve prolapse but a repeat echo can answer that question. More importantly the above symptoms you mentioned can be due to a cardiac arrhythmia or heart failure or even coronary disease. see your cardiologist so they can decide what to order. I would start with some basic blood work including TSH, CBC, BMP, and echo and a holter