{"id":16,"date":"2007-02-12T19:29:28","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T00:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2007\/02\/12\/beta-blockers-post-heart-valve-replacement-aortic-valve-replacement-via-ross-procedure-surgery\/"},"modified":"2024-01-12T16:14:53","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T21:14:53","slug":"beta-blockers-post-heart-valve-replacement-aortic-valve-replacement-via-ross-procedure-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2007\/02\/12\/beta-blockers-post-heart-valve-replacement-aortic-valve-replacement-via-ross-procedure-surgery\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Beta Blockers After Heart Valve Replacement Via The Ross Procedure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the advantages of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/ross-procedure.php\">using the Ross Procedure<\/a> is the fact that patients do not require the use of any medications (e.g. Coumadin) following the operation.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, however, I learned from Lee Crowley that Dr. Ryan suggests that all Ross Procedure patients take beta blockers. My cardiothoracic surgeon, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Vaughn-Starnes-Los+Angeles-California.php\">Dr. Vaughn Starnes<\/a>, has a different opinion as I am not currently taking any medication. Yet, I found Lee&#8217;s email to be very interesting. Therefore, I thought I would post it for all you to consider. Here it is:<\/p>\n<p>I am on 50 mg Toprol XL 2X\/day. Dr. Ryan (William Ryan III) puts almost all of his Ross patients on a Beta Blocker, as I understand it. I actually called him a couple of weeks ago to see if I could reduce the dosage, and he recommended I not do that at this time.<\/p>\n<p>He said the reason for the Beta Blocker is two-fold.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One, it keeps my BP in check. He said Ross patients need to keep their Systolic pressure below 120 (preferably around 110). My &#8220;normal&#8221; BP well before my surgery was around 135\/80. Now, it is usually around 112\/70.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Second, the Beta Blocker will reduce my heart rate, especially during activity. This is important to reduce the stress on the heart, especially while it goes through remodelling. I had significant LV Hypertrophy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Dr. Ryan said he likes to keep his Ross patients on a Beta Blocker indefinitely most of the time. He strongly believes it will help the longevity of the valves. He said I will probably be able to reduce my dosage to 25mg 2X\/day at 1-year post-op, and down to 25mg 1X\/day one year after that.<\/p>\n<p>I mentioned side effects in my previous post. One side effect I attribute to the Toprol XL is I feel a little sluggishness when I play tennis. I play at a pretty high level, and feel a &#8220;micro-second&#8221; slow when I play. That&#8217;s the best way I can describe it. I played tennis right up to my surgery and did not have this problem. Also, I am cold a lot more often than before, which is a known side effect.<\/p>\n<p>I also occasionally have weird, vivid dreams that I did not have before. I actually enjoy this side effect.<\/p>\n<p>These are not really significant in the grand scheme of things. I can definitely live with them.<\/p>\n<p>I hope your recovery continues to go well. I really enjoyed your pictures of the surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ross-procedure"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38248,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/38248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}