My Kids Had Some Arterial Resistance Testing Today

[anna]

Hi Guys my kids had some testing today! a nice Dr. doing some testing on kids with a specific heart condition, thought my kids might benefit from his testing! My kids had a piece of equipment attached to them that calculated resistance of their Aortas, spine then tilted. Their results seem normal one of my kids had a low normal result, but other 2 where normal. I do not recall the details but 2 of my kids had a 30 point rise in HR but the one that had a low normal pulse something did not have the 30 point rise but the only stayed tilted for 10 mins so think they would all have had a bigger HR increase if up longer. Any way all my kids legs and arms went deep red while lying still then even more so when tilted. Nice Dr. did not really have an explanation as why this happened as my kids did not have much of a BP drop, and only a little rise in HR. One odd thing that happened was that the cardiac output machine did not work on all 3 of my kids but it worked fine on one of the DR.'s techies who had the wise idea to check it on herself, could this anomaly have something to do with my kids?! it is just soo odd Dr. said he has done 100 or so of these tests and this only happened twice before!!

We should get some info back in the next few weeks so I might understand more of what is going on as Dr. said he needs to compare results with other subjects.

Oh my daughters test did show up some major eptopic beats that Dr. said should be looked into some more.

[flop]

I've not heard of this specific test before, is it something that the doctor is doing research on?

I did however recently attend a patient day at the heart rhythm congress in the UK. The day I attended was for STARS a UK charity that works with patients with all causes of blackouts (loss of consciousness). One of the stalls in the exhibition was demonstrating a new machine for measuring beat-to-beat bloodpressure with BP cuff on your finger. This is the sort of machine that Prof Mathias's team use when doing tilt tests. But this machine was more advanced as it also calculated systemic vascular resistance and cardiac output.

The rep doing the demonstrations had never heard of POTS but when I explained that we get dizzy and tachy when we stand up he was keen to see what happened to me. He put the BP cuff on my finger and had me sit on the floor for a while then stand up. The results showed an amazing difference

sitting cardiac output = 10 litres / min

standing cardiac output = 4 litres / min!!!!

Flop

[anna]

Hi Flop,

Yes this Dr is doing a research study, looking into arterial resistance. I think the equipment he was using was probably the type Prof. M uses, but with a electronic cardiometer as a separate machine (smallish blue box thing).

It is interesting to see that you had such a difference in your sitting and standing cardiac output wow, this Dr. told us that it was very unlikely that the kids CO would be lower than normal as they where having normal bioreflex responses no big dips in BP or highs in HR, but as the kids were only up 10 mins, had been starting to pool while lying down and they have very good muscle pump reflexes I wander!!! I would so like to get my hands on this new equipment you tried, sounds very interesting indeed. Any idea what this device is called, I would like to see if any clinic has invested in one, it might answer alot of questions we have!!

[jesse1919]

sitting cardiac output = 10 litres / min

standing cardiac output = 4 litres / min!!!!

Flop

10! that's huge. 5 is a "typical" resting value.

[ramakentesh]

Interesting results.

[flop]

I'll see if I can find the leaflet from the exhibition - at the moment I can't even remember the name of the company!

Flop