{"id":446,"date":"2008-06-30T07:27:36","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T12:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2008\/06\/30\/the-risks-of-smooching-a-heart-valve-patient\/"},"modified":"2019-03-05T15:15:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-05T20:15:53","slug":"the-risks-of-smooching-a-heart-valve-patient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2008\/06\/30\/the-risks-of-smooching-a-heart-valve-patient\/","title":{"rendered":"The Risks Of Smooching A Heart Valve Patient?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I receive a patient or caregiver question that is unique and interesting, trust me&#8230; you are the first to read about it.<\/p>\n<p>For example: This morning, I woke up, gave Robyn (my wife) a kiss as she left for work, made a cup of coffee and then turned on my computer. Among all the spam emails that I quickly deleted, there was a question from Bhupinder about kissing heart valve patients.<\/p>\n<p>Bhupinder&#8217;s question was, &#8220;Hi Adam, Is there any risk to kiss or to smooch a heart valve patient? Please advise. Thanks! Bhupinder&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Kissing A Heart Surgery Patient\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/kissing-patient.jpg\" width=\"260\" height=\"237\" \/><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First, I had to chuckle a bit&#8230; Why?<\/p>\n<p>Well. There are certain words in the English language that I thoroughly enjoy. And yes, you guessed it, &#8220;smooch&#8221; is one of those words. I don&#8217;t know why. There is something so honest, so innocent, so traditional and so cuddly about the word, smooch. That said, when I actually saw &#8220;smooch&#8221; in an email about heart surgery, I let out a &#8220;He.. He&#8230; He&#8230;&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Now, as for an answer to the question, I believe the answer is no. From what I understand, there is no risk to smooch or kiss a heart valve patient. Heart valve disease is not contagious or transmitted through human contact. While there are certain, medical terms associated with heart valve disease that suggest potential risks (e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/bacterial-endocarditis.php\">bacterial endocarditis infection<\/a>), they are only medical terms. They are not infectious in the sense that we might think of the common cold.<\/p>\n<p>I hope that helps you understand more about kissing, smooching and heart valve patients.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/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":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recovery"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","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=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}