One factor that has to be considered in assessing valve disease is your physical size. I found this out when I met with my surgeon in November. He told me that while my "numbers" fell within the guidelines for "moderate" AS, since I am "a big guy" that meant that my AS might already be severe. At one point during our meeting he sat down and gave some numbers off the top of his head to the RNP working with him and asked her to do some calculations. I didn't understand at the time, but I now believe he was doing valve area index (VAI) calculations.
Your VAI is your valve area in cm2 divided by your body surface area. In my case, as of my echo in August my AVA was calculated at between 1.1 and 1.4 cm2. My current body surface area is 2.35 m2. Plugging these values into the formula I come up with a VAI of between .468 and .595. According to the guidelines, anything less than 0.6 indicates severe AS. Even if I was at my ideal weight of about 200 (I'm 226 now), my VAI would still be severe or borderline severe at between .49 and .625. I'm a little fuzzy on what the surgeon said exactly, but t was something like they want to do the surgery when the number goes below .5.
Where is that latest echo report copy from November 20th? I sure hope I get it this week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment