Breathless

[joel132]

hi all .. x

its been six months since AVR & triple by pass and i still have difficulty breathing with slightest exertion. And blood pressure is till too high. i am on 10mg of ramipril, 2.5 bisoprolol and 2.5 water tablets to try to bring it down. My question is how common is it for being able to breath normally to take so long? is there anything am i missing that could be doing to help

[Chappychap]

Hello Joel, a few months ago you asked about exercises. How diligent have you been regarding your daily breathing/coughing exercises and your daily walks?

By a coincidence someone replied to your previous post saying they were never given any exercises after their bypass op and, six months on, they complained about feeling like you're feeling now!

The key thing that isn't widely appreciated is that as soon as the chest cavity is punctured (as it is with open heart surgery) your lungs immediately collapse. The lungs have no muscles or internal supporting structure, so when your chest is opened they go as flat a pancakes. Reflating your lungs is a really major job, it takes many weeks or even months of constant application and exercise. It's a serious commitment. but without it you'll never enjoy the stupendous potential benefits of your bypass operation.

In the pre-Covid era most of us went on Cardio Rehab courses, where the importance of these exercises was really drummed into us. I suspect there's a whole swathe of bypass patients at the moment who sadly aren't fully recovering because of the lack of Cardio Rehab support. There are on-line versions provided by the BHF, if you haven't done one I'd suggest enrolling.

Good luck!

[joel132 in reply to Chappychap]

thanks for getting back to me. i could do better with exercise i do try and get out to the downs close where i live and use stationery exercise bike but i can only do short periods. Cardio team keep putting off enrolling me into one of their online rehab exercises because blood pressure won't come down, when it does they say they will enrol me. i didn't know that about collapsed lung and re-expanding it again. i am not complaining because i know many are in the same boat but this lockdown certainly hasn't helped in being able to get help