I recently went to the doctor for a check up and was told I had a heart murmur. They drew blood and did an EKG, but I haven’t gotten the results yet. What exactly is a heart murmur? Is it serious?
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In adults, abnormal murmurs are most often due to acquired heart valve problems. A doctor can evaluate heart sounds by listening to your heart with a stethoscope and sometimes will have you undergo other tests to help determine the cause. Treatment, if needed, is directed at the underlying cause of your heart murmurs.
If you have an innocent heart murmur, you likely won't experience any signs or symptoms.
Frequently an abnormal heart murmur also has no associated symptoms. When the following signs or symptoms are present, they may indicate a heart problem:
Skin that appears blue, especially on your fingertips and lips
Swelling
Shortness of breath
Enlarged liver
Enlarged neck veins
Poor appetite and failure to grow normally (in infants)
Weight gain (in adults and children)
Heavy sweating with minimal or no exertion
Chest pain
Dizziness
Fainting
Treatment
An innocent heart murmur generally doesn't require treatment because the heart is normal. If innocent murmurs are the result of a condition such as fever or hyperthyroidism, the murmurs will go away once that condition is treated.
If you have abnormal heart murmurs, treatment is often not necessary initially. Your doctor may want to monitor the condition over time. If treatment is necessary, it depends on what heart problem is causing your murmurs and may include medications or surgery.
Medications
The medication your doctor prescribes depends on the specific heart problem you have. Some medications your doctor might give you will:
Help your heart squeeze harder
Prevent blood clots that block your blood vessels
Remove excess fluid from your body
Lower your blood pressure
Surgical options also depend on your specific heart problem but may include:
Patching a hole in your heart
Fixing a valve
Rebuilding a blood vessel
Widening a blood vessel that's too narrow
In addition, if you have heart murmurs, you may need to be careful of infections that could travel to your heart. To avoid this, your doctor may prescribe antibiotics before you go to the dentist or have surgery or circumstances that can increase the chances of your getting an infection.
Murmurs are abnormal heart sounds that are produced as a result of turbulent blood flow, which is sufficient to produce audible noise. This most commonly results from narrowing or leaking of valves or the presence of abnormal passages through which blood flows in or near the heart. Murmurs are not usually part of the normal cardiac physiology and thus warrant further investigations. However, they sometimes result from harmless flow characteristics of no clinical significance.
Murmur is an abnormal sound of the heart. Normally 2 sounds are heard, the LUB and DUB. Murmurs are produced when blood exits an opening in the heart that is too small(systolic murmurs), or when blood flows back(diastolic murmurs), or just flows the wrong way(shunts like VSD, ASD, PDA)!
Think of it as blowing through the air through your closed mouth.When you force air through your lips, dont they vibrate? Murmurs are just like that.
Murmurs may be serious, but for the most part just an incidental finding on the exam. Rule of thumb, the louder the more bad it is. Also if its a diastolic murmur, its not that good either.
The doctor can tell you what type you have and whether or not it is something to worry about.
A swishing sound with a heart beat. Most are simply blood swishing through a valve and of no significance.