Did Surgery Cause My Pots?

[bella27]

I have had 3 very extensive jaw surgeries and, looking back, I am pretty sure that my POTs symptoms began directly after my first surgery, when I was 15. I had been on way too much adderall at the time for wrongly diagnosed ADD and have always solely attributed my POTS symptoms to that. I am wondering now if having so much adderall in my system COMBINED with all the blood loss from surgery may have contributed to the onset of my POTS. Did anyone else first notice their POTS symptoms directly after a surgery? I am probably getting carried away here but maybe I lost too much blood during the surgery and need a blood transfusion? Also, did anyone else take high doses of adderall for a long period of time? I still kinda suspect adderall is the main culprit...

[flop]

Having surgery is recognised as a trigger factor for POTS. I believe that the current thinking is that it is the stress of having surgery rather than say blood loss that triggers POTS.

If you had major bleeding durring surgery it would be normal for the doctors to check your Hb and haematocrit and then transfuse if needed. If you have an acute bleed but don't have a transfusion the body will gradually replace the lost red blood cells and your Hb and haematocrit will go back to normal over several weeks/couple of months.

The main DINET website has a section on the causes of POTS, it can be found here.

The paragraph below is from the DINET website on the POTS: An Overview page.

People generally develop POTS after becoming sick with a virus, giving birth, or being exposed to great bodily stressors (i.e. surgery, trauma or chemotherapy). Some people have had POTS their entire lives. Teenagers sometimes develop the disorder during the years of rapid growth, and 75-80% of them can look forward to being asymptomatic when they reach adulthood (Grubb, Kanjwal & Kosinski, 2006).

I hope this helps,

Flop

[ramakentesh]

POTS follows four onset types - lifelong, mild then abrupt, abrupt and gradual.

In patients that experience an abrupt onset, there is often reported to be a triggering factor - stress, injury, infection or pregnancy are common triggers. Patients who exhibit mild then abrupt onset will likewise often find that their POTs goes from being a mild and nonspecific problem to a major one following some sort of stressful event (bodily stressful).

Many patients report the arrival of mild POTS symptoms around the age of 14-15 and a diagnosis in their mid to late 20s is a recurrent pattern.

I had mild and nonspecific symptoms from around that age, but didnt experience a crash of symptoms until I was 26 after a trip overseas, a virus, too much to drink and heavy exercise all in one weekend...

The causes page on this website is helpful, although many of those listed are obscure causes and wont apply to the majority of patients. Some of the causal factors are still unclear.