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Dear Adam,<\/p>\n
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My mother, a young 87 year old woman, is experiencing shortness of breath. After being referred to a cardiologist and having an echo-cardiogram, it was determined that she has aortic stenosis<\/a>. Her only symptoms are shortness of breath. The first cardiologist wants to monitor with echos every three months. If symptoms worsen, he would not hesitate to recommend aortic valve replacement<\/a>. We went for a second opinion to MGH. The cardiologist didn\u2019t see any reason to delay, and wanted to fast track for surgery. My mother has been on Immuran for five years, treating a flesh eating disease. Her immune system is compromised and I am scared to death of infection.<\/p>\n Living in Boston, I am confident of receiving the best of treatment, but the dilemma is… Watch and wait? Or, roll the dice? Considering these opposing diagnoses, I am at a loss. Do you have any advice? — Susan”<\/p>\n MY RESPONSE TO SUSAN:<\/p>\n Hi Susan,<\/p>\n Nice to meet you and thanks for sharing your mom’s story with me…<\/p>\n It’s quite the dilemma when your first- and second-opinions do not create a consensus about the next steps.<\/p>\n That said, you may want to obtain a third opinion. This may seem extreme but I know of another patient who was in the exact same situation as your mother. His third-opinion suggested that he post-pone aortic valve replacement (which he has done) and continue to monitor the aortic stenosis. That was six months ago and the situation has not worsened.<\/p>\n Also, one other quick piece of advice. Having been through a challenging heart surgery and recovery, you DO NOT want to “roll the dice”<\/em> in this situation. You and your mother want to feel 100% – actually make that 500% – confident in the need for surgery and your surgeon.<\/p>\n I hope that helps. Keep me updated!<\/p>\n And… Keep on tickin!
\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":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-before-surgery"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","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=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}