Ian's ECHO 10-2020 looked good. He'd grown but the rate of dilation wasn't changing. Then he had one 10-21 that changed more dramatically. There was a size increase of 8mm in one year. His cardiologist explained that a change of 5 mm gets a surgeons attention but 8mm is really scary. We needed to do an MRI to see the whole root. On Nov 30th, they did an MRI. Unfortunately it showed the whole aorta is dilated, not just the area they can see during an ECHO. Which means that if surgery is needed to stop it from bursting, it's full on open heart surgery to get to the whole vessel. Quite scary.
We started him on a new med, Metroprolol. Originally, this was going to replace the Losartan 25mg he was already on for years. Now, they needed to add it. They quickly went from adding it, to going up on the dose from 25mg to 50mg. I was so nervous as, of course, he's unable to tell me if he's feeling off. I just would have to watch him closely.
After a couple of weeks on the Metroprolol, we also started him on a new trial med, which I've been looking into for a few years. I'll do another post about this one. But since beginning this med, along with the other 2 meds, the ECHO he did in January, shows improvement to the dilation!
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