Breast Cancer Genetics
professional cardioalogists plz help!?
My mom is a breast cancer survivor of several years. She hasn’t been in the best of shape since then and her heart especially. Recently, she did some tests and spent a day with a portable device that measured her heart beats. When she came home from the doctor’s office, I was looking at the charts and her heart rate isn’t normal. The regular heart beat had distanced pauses in between each beat, but her heart beat chart went up and down without a set interval. Her doctor is looking into the problem, but I was wondering if other professional cardioalogists could give me their opinion on what might be the cause of my mom’s abnormal heart rate. She says it gets worse during allergy season. Also, before she has had breif moments where she felt really tired or had a moment where she has had to sit down really quickly from unstability. Is this problem with her heart cancer realted? Could it be genetics? or something else?
Lots of cardiac arrhythmias come from hearts that are not in that great of shape. The term is called cardiomyopathy. Cardio (heart) myo (muscle) opathy (pathology). It means that the muscle does not contract normally and the muscle is often dilated and “floppy”. As you can imagine as the muscle is stretched, so too is the electrical system.
This is purely a guess: There are chemo agents used for breast CA that can precipitate cardiomyopathy. It may be the source of your mother’s sick heart. There are complications other than arrhythmias that occur with cardiomyopathy. Fatigue and shortness of breath are the most common.
I hope this helps. Good luck.
I would strongly encourage you to attend a medical appointment with your mother the next time she goes to her cardiologist.
