Posted by John O. on 7/22/2008, 3:19 pm, in reply to "Re: Cor Pulmonale and secondary PH"
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Chris, we are indeed all different. I couldn't get my heart rate anywhere near 120 if you held a gun to my head--and that's after my daily half-hour on the treadmill. As far as my BP goes, I was told 15 years ago that I would be taking Diltiazem or something like it "for the rest of your life" only to find a couple of years ago that I was driving it too low, so I stopped taking anything for it, and haven't needed to since. The PH even at 50 was called "moderate" by my doc but when I ran it by folks on a PH board everyone got in a lather and told me I was probably going to keel over any minute.
Although I have occasional mild edema there have been only a few times I've needed Lasix, and while I watch the salt intake I'll go off the wagon every so often and eat a whole bag of Cheetos, or something similarly awful, and I rationalize cheeseburgers because they're protein. I've never seen a cardiologist in my life, and my pulmo insists I don't need to. Yet he writes "cor pulmonale" on my chart and doesn't even bother to tell me about it--I peeked at the paperwork when he was out of the office. So maybe you're right in that it's a CYA thing for him.
BTW I meant to include cardiac cath in the dx of SPH, along with the Doppler echo. It was some of the others in the link, like VQ, that I wondered about. But I can also see where they wouldnt be wild about testing--big money involved, after all--given that there's not a whole lot they can do about the condition. I'm told that the one drug available, Bosentan, is so expensive most insurance companies won't cover it.
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