Just returned from the baby’s 15-month checkup (new pediatrician,) and was told that she has a “slight murmur” between s1 and s2. First, what does that mean? And second, please tell me your experiences, if you will.
She is going for a chest x-ray Monday, and then to a cardiologist as soon as the appointment can be set, and I’m off to Google this. However, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna scare the bejesus out of myself by finding all of the worst case scenarios and imagining disasters until that follow-up. I’d appreciate hearing about people with heart murmurs who lived vigorous lives and ran marathons until age 97…
First of all, take a deep breath. A heart murmur is just a sound. The normal heart goes lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub. The lub is s1 (sound #1) and the dub is s2 (sound #2). The doctor is hearing an extra sound between the two, like lub-whoosh-dub lub-whoosh-dub lub-whoosh dub.
The normal heart sounds are made by the valves in the heart. The murmur could be anything from slight turbulence from the way the heart is shaped, to mild leakage between the two upper chambers of the heart (there is a hole there that usually closes at birth but sometimes takes longer or can stay open for life without problems) to leakage through one of the valves.
An X-ray will help show if the heart looks normal and a cardiologist will be able to tell what is causing the sound. Many many infant murmurs aren’t caused by any specific problems (what they call “innocent” murmurs) and the kid often grows out of them. Most of the others are caused by easily fixable problems. If your baby is healthy, breathing well, and not turning blue there is likely nothing too serious wrong.
I had a pretty kooky murmer when I was small (III or IV I think). I had loads of checks when I was small, met with a variety of cardiologists, had a shwack of tests and they decided it was benign.
Now it’s undetectable - essentially one side of my heart grew a bit faster than the other causing the murmer. Eventually they evened out and the problem went away.
Hopefully it will be something as simple as that for your daughter.
I’ve got a heart murmur and have had no serious ill-effects except a few incidents, when I was younger, of a non-provoked racing heart that passed in about five to thirty minutes. Every time a doc listens to my heart for the first time they always seem concerned at first and do a double take, but have never really pursued it further with any intervention.
I just like to think my heart marches to the beat of a different drummer.
Not as harrowing as I expected, so yes, time to take a deep breath and calm down. Little Miss is a healthy, happy, energetic 15-month-old toddler, but when you start hearing words like “cardiologist,” “x-rays,” and “heart murmur,” and it’s my baby girl, it’s hard not to panic and imagine all sorts of baaaaaad stuff, (especially since my mother has a murmur due to a mitral valve prolapse - which does cause health issues for her, and which she flatly refuses to have surgery on.)
Thanks for the reassuring information and stories, now to just get through this weekend. And to reassure my husband, who will panic far worse than I will, since this is his first and only child, and who is obsessively concerned about every sniffle, tumble, or mild fever - like any first-time parent. [For example, he is absolutely, positively convinced that there is something dreadfully wrong with the baby’s feet or legs, since she toes in and her legs looks somewhat bowed. Two doctors and two nurse practitioners have told him otherwise (“normal for babies, no treatment needed, etc.”) But, since doctors treated that vigorously 40 years ago, when he and I both wore corrective shoes/braces, SHE must need them too! (I still remember those damned shoes, and still can’t bear to put those white high-top leather shoes on a child… ugh!)]
I don’t know as much detail as my mother, but I had a heart murmur diagnosed fairly early, serious enough that I needed to have antibiotics when I went to the dentist. It was always described to me as a ‘rough spot’ which was leaking a small amount of blood between 2 ventricles. Seemed to have cleared itself up by the time I was 12 or so (certainly could not be heard with a stethescope), and I had an angiogram in my late 20s which didn’t find anything unusual. It’s never affected my health or fitness in any way - never run a marathon but complete a couple of long distance bike comps (up to 145km) in my early thirties.
So, fingers crossed that it turns out to be nothing to worry about!
My mom had a heart murmur from birth, serious enough that a doctor told her she couldn’t have children. I don’t know if she ignored him or didn’t understand that he meant she SHOULDN’T have children, but she gave birth to three children and lived to the ripe old age of 86.
I used to work in pediatric cardiology, though IANAD/N. We had so many patients who were extremely, boringly normal. Sometimes the murmur resolves on its own, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes having a murmur means nothing more than maybe a yearly checkup.
There are more serious diagnoses as well but if you haven’t noticed anything more dramatic in terms of symptoms - stuff like turning blue in the lips when sucking hard, that kind of thing - I might be willing to bet money that it probably is nothing very major. (But don’t hold me to that! I’m being encouraging, because Googling will give you worst-case scenarios!)
I recommend a pediatric cardiologist rather than a standard (adult) cardiologist - you may have to look in a pediatrics department for one. Where I worked, we saw patients in their 30s and 40s who’d had heart surgery as infants and needed nothing more than a yearly checkup, because adult cardiologists were usually befuddled by the post-surgical heart anatomy and sounds. Eventually they started a joint clinic for adult patients so they could see an adult cardiologist for cholesterol/high blood pressure/etc at the same time they were getting a checkup on how their neo-natal problem was doing. Find someone who is board-certified in pediatric cardiology.
Mine goes “lub-dub-woosh.” You can grow out of them, as psychobunny mentioned. In my case, I grew into it. Or at least no one noticed it until I was almost 20. I’m very active and hope to run a marathon next year. It doesn’t affect me at all and sometimes the doctor can’t hear it.
Edit: The lub-dub-woosh is because the valve that’s supposed to prevent backwash is just a little bit slow at closing. It’s like a door that instead of slamming shut, is gently closed.
The detail is that you had backwash, where the blood leaked back through the valve the wrong way. The antibiotic is because mouth work can find it’s way to the heart or something(I’m fuzzy on that bit because my murmur has no backwash).
I have a murmur as well as a few other heart problems, but I’ve been told that most people who have any or all of my issues rarely even know, let alone have any symptoms. For most of my teenage years I saw a pediatric cardiologist every 3-6 mos, depending on various tests. Since I hit adulthood, I have been fairly stable, although I do take daily beta blockers, and likely will until I die.
