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Stress-Echo Showed Reduced Stroke Volume After Exercise: What Do You Think?


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Hello all,

So about a month ago I underwent a stress-echo during which they perform an echocardiogram before you get on a treadmill and after you've been on it. So when I started the test, my HR was 92 but rose to 157 under 90 seconds. No surprise there; I don't do inclines (but fine with stairs?!)... I saw my cardio last week and he told me he now had tangible proof that something is physiologically wrong with my hemodynamics when I get upright and exercise since my stroke volume was perfect before the test (ejection fraction just fine) but not after the exercise part. He told me from what he observed on the echo after the stress test it was normal for me to experience shortness of breath and other symptoms after being upright and tachy. So a small victory for me as I now have objective evidence it is not all in my head (HA!), but this is coming from a cardio who is not an autonomic dysfunction specialist. He did assure me though my heart is perfectly fine and the compromised hemodynamics after exercise are caused solely by autonomic dysfunction they know I have had for over two years now.

Has anyone else had similar results following a stress-echo? I did a bit of research on the internet re: autonomic dysfunction, exercise and reduced stroke volume, and found studies by Dr. Levine (surprise! surprise!) and this one:

http://jap.physiology.org/content/103/4/1128.full

BTW, I am no longer deconditioned. I was for a while but have been quite active since last Fall and now chase my two young kids all day, in spite of still feeling like a bag of dirt (BP this morning was 78/54). Guess that's for the other thread about if I hide it!

Thanks!

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This looks like a really interesting article. Glanced thru it but will have to read it in depth later. (Son is getting married on Saturday so a little busy at the moment.)

But, this is from 2007, and from Mayo so why are they now going back to the "deconditioning" theme again when they had a study like this back then? Maybe I missed something when I went thru this quickly but frustrating that they would be beating that dead horse again now.

Thanks for posting!

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