{"id":29,"date":"2020-06-05T18:06:02","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T18:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/?page_id=29"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:48:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:48:54","slug":"high-rate-loud-heartbeat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/high-rate-loud-heartbeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Q&#038;A: High Heart Rates &#038; Loud Heartbeats After Cardiac Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just received two great questions about the heart after cardiac surgery. Tyler asked me, &#8220;Are high heart rates common after surgery?&#8221; Lisa wrote in, &#8220;Adam &#8211; I had surgery three days ago. My heart is beating very loudly at night, almost like it&#8217;s beating out of my chest. Is this normal?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To provide Tyler and Lisa expert responses to their questions, I interview <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Junaid-Khan-Oakland-California.php\">Dr. Junaid Khan<\/a>, a leading cardiac surgeon from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/hospital\/alta-bates-summit-valve-center\">Alta Bates Summit Medical Center<\/a> in Oakland, California. As you may already know, Dr. Khan is a heart valve specialist having performed over 2,500 heart valve procedures during his career. Here are the highlights of my interview with Dr. Khan specific to high heart rates and loud heartbeats.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i8D2ds0ItqE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Key Patient Learnings from Dr. Khan<\/h2>\n<p>Dr. Kahn shared several important points during this interview that I wanted to write down and remember:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/profileImages\/144_129_141.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Junaid Khan - Heart Surgeon at Alta Bates Summitt\" width=\"129\" height=\"141\" \/>Dr. Junaid Khan<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>High heart rates are common after cardiac surgery and normal as patients recover from heart surgery.<\/li>\n<li>Up to 25% of patients may experience <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/atrial-fibrillation\/\">atrial fibrillation<\/a>, an abnormal or irregular heart rhythm after heart surgery. Atrial fibrillation needs to be monitored as it can cause an elevated risk of stroke. Medications can be used to manage atrial fibrillation.<\/li>\n<li>Most of the time, higher heart rates and atrial fibrillation are temporary cardiac conditions for patients and go away over time.<\/li>\n<li>Loud heartbeats are a common experience for patients following heart surgery. Patients may experience a feeling that their heart is beating out of their chest.<\/li>\n<li>Patients who have heart valve surgery through different access points &#8211; sternotomy, minimally-invasive (thoracotomy) and transcatheter approaches &#8211; may experience loud heartbeats.<\/li>\n<li>Those patients who receive a mechanical heart valve may <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2015\/03\/02\/mechanical-valve-ticking-clicking\/\">hear their heart valve &#8220;tick&#8221;<\/a> as the valve opens-and-closes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Thanks Tyler, Lisa &amp; Dr. Khan!<\/h2>\n<p>I hope that helped you learn more about high heart rates and loud heartbeats after heart surgery. I want to thank Tyler and Lisa for their questions. I also want to extend a special thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Junaid-Khan-Oakland-California.php\">Dr. Khan<\/a> for sharing his clinical experiences and research with our patient community!<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the hearing impaired members of our community, I have provided a written transcript of my interview with Dr. Khan below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"cms.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"class_list":["post-29","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-recovery"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}