Having just returned from a wedding in Ohio (which was a hell I will save for a later thread) I recieved news that a dear friend of mine had been hospitalized for an enlarged heart condition. Now I must confess a deep ignorance of most serious medical conditions and this one has me scared to death.
She gave birth 9 weeks ago to a gorgeous baby girl (her third child) and since has had heart related problems. This second “episode”, as she calls it, was VERY severe. She tells me that she almost didn’t make it.
When I went to see her last fri. she was very thin and was on a feeder tube. She also mentioned that they had installed a pace maker and that she was now on the heart doners list…god she was sooo thin…but she was lucid and for the first time drinking a protein shake. Her sister mentioned that they want to try for a mechanical heart but she is not strong enough for surgery…
All my rambling aside my question for any medical professionals on this board is what is she up against here? Will her heart shrink any with medication? They said her walls were down to 3cm thick…is that bad? What is this condition called? and does anyone have any cites I can research?
Any help you can give would help me ease my worry, I know that you are all good people here and I could use some support.
An enlarged heart is usually a symptom of some other condition: high blood pressure, a leaky valve, blocked coronary arteries, or disease of the heart muscle itself. If the other condition is treated, the heart muscle returns to its normal function and may shrink with time. This assumes that we’re talking about a thickened heart muscle. If the heart chambers are expanding, often the muscle has thinned, and is probably irreparably damaged. In this case, it sounds like the heart itself has some pathology, and has grown enlarged to compensate for its own weakness. 3 cm is pretty damn thick. The two conditions described above are known respectively as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and dilated cardiomyopathy.
If I’ve understood your post correctly, your friend developed an enlarged heart only after delivering her baby. Her heart had been normal before that.
This sounds very much like postpartum cardiomyopathy (sometimes called peripartum cardiomyopathy). No one knows what causes this condition and no specific treatment is available.
Postpartum means after delivery and cardiomyopathy means damaged or diseased heart muscle. So, this is a condition where heart muscle damage occurs either late in pregancy or shortly after delivery.
As with all forms of dilated cardiomyopathy (i.e. heart muscle disease leading to an enlarged heart), the treatment will usually consist of medicine to “unload” and assist the heart, medicines to prevent excessive stimulation of the heart, and medicines to remove excess fluid from the body.
If the heart remains enlarged, there may be a role/need for heart transplantation. That is why monitoring your friend’s heart’s size and function is important.
This is a rare and very serious condition. I hope she is being treated by someone who has experience with the entity.