Possible effects of pressure on my heart

[jepuskar]

I am awaiting my results from an echocardiogram I had done a few weeks ago. At the end of the procedure..which took about 10 minutes I looked at the monitor and was looking at my heart function. During the test at times there was audio..nothing like hearing and seeing your heart work.

Good advice given...now make an appointment.

 

[NancyLynn]

Detection of/response to at least the innocent kinds of murmurs seems to fluctuate dramatically over the years (trends in medical training, perhaps?)

I was diagnosed with a murmur when I was 2 years old, and until the last 15 years or so it was commented on by every new physician who listened to my heart. In the last 15 years no new physician has pointed it out, but when I point it out to them they take another listen and say something the equivalent of "oh, yeah," and move on without further comment.

On the other end of the spectrum, in the 80s, during a 2-3 year period, my brother, mother, and grandmother were all diagnosed with murmurs as well, by different physicians (at roughly 30, 60, and 80). All were told they almost certainly have had the murmur since birth (and given the family connection to me that seems a reasonable assumption). After that brief period of notice, comments on/notice of their murmurs stopped (similar to the disappearance in the same time period of comments about mine).

That is not to say you should not take the advice of everyone who has said have it checked out. It can be serious, and I have had mine evaluated informally (as a child), and more thoroughly (as an adult, in a more sophisticated medical community) for potential concerns about participation in strenuous activity - and impact on life, in general. It is just to say that just like many other medical conditions, in my lifetime there appear to be periods when at least innocent murmurs have been more likely to be detected (or commented on) for reasons unrelated to whether they actually exist or are potentially troublesome.

 

[TSandM]

NancyLynn, I honestly believe that the reason you haven't had it commented upon is that the emphasis on good physical diagnosis has gone down SO much in medicine over the last thirty years. Nowadays, we put our faith in lab tests and imaging studies, and I think a lot of people just get sloppy with physical examination skills, because nobody is going to treat a patient based simply on what they feel or hear any more. It's a great frustration to me as an ER doc, as I send almost every patient with appendicitis off for a CT scan because the surgeons won't even come and see them until the study is done . . .

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

...the emphasis on good physical diagnosis has gone down SO much in medicine over the last thirty years.

And this explains my frustration in my real job. Some days I feel like we are teaching glorified technicians and not physicians.

 

[span98]

Thanks alot for the responses people. Will be checking out my heart with a cardiologist very soon. However, I did speak to my instructor and she reckons it should be fine for now. If I get the bends, there is a good support/response team available and ready. So I'll be diving Aliwal Shoal off the coast of Scottborough in South Africa tomorrow morning...! Going to be awesome!

 

[rawls]

I would tend to doubt you would be anymore suseptible to DCS than anyone else...Have a great time!!!!

 

[Gary D.]

Have you seen a diving doctor for approval to dive? That would be the first thing you should do, absolutely.

In general (and I'm not a doctor, by far), the body is a big bag of water, and water in uncompress-able in water. It's the gas in our bodies we have to worry about.

Again, I am not a medical professional (however, I did dabble in some pharmaceuticals when I was much younger )

Don't forget that you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Gary D.

 

[NancyLynn]

NancyLynn, I honestly believe that the reason you haven't had it commented upon is that the emphasis on good physical diagnosis has gone down SO much in medicine over the last thirty years.

In general, I agree with you wholeheartedly. My daughter has been the victim of two different doctors, each of whom ignored what I later learned were the classic symptoms of two different illnesses/conditions which I had been reporting to them - in one instance for a year (while begging for a referral to a specialist). Both of those missed diagnoses will have lifelong consequences for her - one impacting nothing more than her appearance, but the other may ultimately shorten her life.

On the other hand in medicine, as elsewhere, things occasionally happen because it is trendy. My experience tells me that during a period in the 80s (don’t remember precisely when), diagnosing heart murmurs was the trend. It coincided roughly with the first big push to pre-medicate folks with heart murmurs for dental treatment – probably not an unrelated trend.

Being told you have a heart murmur when it is borderline, and likely harmless, can be a frightening experience. Unnecessarily giving all individuals with heart murmurs antibiotics, regardless of the underlying cause of the murmur, in advance of every 6 month dental visit does not make sense from a public health perspective. My understanding (from speaking with nurses and physicians) is that identification of a heart sound as a murmur is not an exact science, and in some cases takes a skilled ear. In times when there is a lot of press (either within or outside of the medical community) about murmurs it is likely that more borderline cases will be at least initially tagged as murmurs. Maybe that’s good – maybe not. I can see both sides of that question, given the potentially serious problems a murmur can indicate.

At any rate, both the refusal to listen to patients in the absence of objective test results and the hypersensitivity to the "illness of the day" likely have their roots in the fertile soil you suggested – declining diagnostic skills among far too many primary care physicians, and reliance on external stuff to do their job for them (whether it is lab tests, insurance company hoops, the pharmaceutical reps, pressure from patients who want a pill to make their cold (or whatever) go away, or press about the illness of the day).

ER docs rock, by the way. All our favorite and most competent specialists were picked up as a result of an ER visit (not quite the same thing as an ER doc, but if it hadn’t been for the ER doc recognizing the problem and putting us in touch with the specialist on call I might still be begging for referrals). I just wish I had a more reliable way of picking primary care docs so it didn’t take an ER visit to get to a specialist . . .

But – that doesn’t change the bottom line for purposes of this discussion, which is if you have been diagnosed with a heart murmur have it fully evaluated.

 

[span98]

ok, so I dived today. Went down to 18m...absolute awesome dive...swam with some dolphins, saw a shark from about a meter away. schools of barricuda, rays etc. Was a great dive. Still going to do that echocardiogram or EKG...still must get my heart checked...