Tag Archives: cardiac disease

Dear Sirs, I recently, at the age of 49, survived an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It helped that I am a GP and was on a ward round in a local care home. The nurse sitting next to me started cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) immediately and I was defibrillated within a few minutes by a team of paramedics. It was strange to wake up somewhere else and told to “keep the oxygen on”. I thought I was in a dream.  It is hard to thank sufficiently the teams in the acute cardiac unit, the ITU and CCU. Usually only 5% survive such an event. Often survivors suffer cognitive deficit that, hopefully, for me is minimal. I did not really have any m

Introduction Women with cardiac disease are at increased risk during pregnancy due, in part, to the volume loading and increased cardiac output associated with normal pregnancy. Any haemodynamic changes are magnified in the case of a multiple pregnancy. It is essential that any woman with acquired or congenital heart disease, or those at increased risk, e.g. an adult survivor of childhood cancer who may have subclinical left ventricular dysfunction, be seen for pre-pregnancy counselling to quantify their risk and optimise their cardiac state prior to conception. Deaths from cardiac disease in pregnancy are increasing, and cardiac disease rem

Background Heart disease is the leading cause of death in pregnant women and, despite advances in cardiology, maternal deaths from cardiac disease have increased over the past 20 years.1 Cardiac conditions such as pulmonary hypertension, severe valve disease, cyanotic and complex congenital heart disease carry a high mortality2 and need specialist care.3 It has been recommended that pregnant women with cardiac disease should be managed in tertiary centres,4 and many cardiologists caring for pregnant women have a background in congenital heart disease, necessary for the management of complex congenital heart disease. Previously reported series

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