Heart Failure - What does the future hold?

[reallifeboogie]

My mum is in her early 60s and initially was admitted to hospital with shortness of breath. Numerous tests later and shes been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, blood clot on the lung and heart failure. Blood clot likely to have come from heart.

On her discharge notes, it says her BNP is 5041 ng/l which google tells me is extremely high.

Shes been on apixaban and bisoprolol for 2 weeks now and nothing is changing. She can only just about walk a few steps without feeling absolutely exhausted.

Should have ultrasound of heart this week or next (was told within 2 weeks)

What is the prognosis??

Impossible to know tbh - my mother is in a similar situation but slightly less in that she can move around more before running out of steam. They tried cardioversion without success, and are now looking at ablation, but I honestly don't know how much improvement can be obtained from treating the AF. She is on bisoprolol and diuretics, and it seems to be a case of trying one thing and then another but no great improvement so far. Your mother is younger and may respond better to treatment of the AF.

Sorry you guys are going through it too

My Mum was admitted to CCU (like ICU but for hearts) with heart failure. Her heart was working at only 18% she spent over 3 months in hospital. She went on to live for another 15 years and while heart failure was a comobidity it was not her main cause of death. There is a massive variation per patient. Does she have access to heart failure specialisit nurses?

My mum died of heart failure at 86 but she'd had it many years. She also had AF and mitral stenosis.
One thing we found was that getting the right balance of her drugs was crucial. Every so often a doctor would change something and she would go downhill one way or another until the doses were correct.

Massive strides have been made recently in the treatment of HF and your Mum is young enough to benefit from them. She should be assessed after her echo cardiogram and treated appropriately.
You can look up the guidelines for treatment.

@TheYearOfSmallThings and @reallifeboogie , how are things?
I'm in the same boat and really not feeling great. Waiting for a date for ablation.

Sorry to hear that, OnlyFrench. My mum is scheduled for ablation in July, so fingers crossed. She has just been on holiday and she looks so weary in the photos, which is not who she is at all, but she is determined to keep going.

I wish I could have an honest conversation with her consultant as to what the likely outcome will be. My fear is they are just working their way through a list of treatments because she has good insurance so why not?

@TheYearOfSmallThings I got the impression from my cardiologist that nothing has a 100% success rate. I was lucky that cardioversion worked the first time a couple of years ago, but they weren't surprised the arrhythmia had returned. I was offered the choice between having it again or the ablation, with ablation being their recommended option.

My exhaustion is completely debilitating. I have two naps a day, eat well, exercise daily. It's not fair

If cardioversion worked, there is a good chance ablation will do the same job but longer term. In my mum's case cardioversion didn't really achieve anything, so I'm not very optimistic about the ablation - I would be more so in your case.

We are still waiting for further tests. Middle of May she was told 2 weeks for ultrasound of heart. We are still waiting.
She's getting weaker by the day. Can't do anything for herself. Barely eating. Can't walk more than a few steps without getting exhausted.

How is the blood clot in her lungs?