Groin bruise a month after TAVR has gone yellow and there is a hard lump under it. How long does this take to settle?

#1frankm1952(Joined Apr 2026 · 19 posts)August 12, 2026, 7:47 pm

Four and a half weeks since my procedure and the heart side of things is honestly a small miracle. I walked to the shop and back this morning without stopping once, which I had not done since about Christmas.

The bit that is bothering me is the leg. The bruise from the groin puncture spread halfway down my thigh, went every colour you can imagine, and is now a sort of yellow green that looks worse than it feels. Underneath the top of it there is a hard lump about the size of a walnut. Not hot, not particularly sore unless I press it, but it is definitely there and it has not shifted in about ten days.

Is this the normal course of things? I keep telling myself the valve is the serious part and this is just a bruise, but it is the only thing I can actually see, so of course it is the thing I stare at. Did anyone else have a lump like this and how long did it take to go.

#2TwoNightsTerry(Joined Feb 2026 · 63 posts)August 13, 2026, 7:26 am

Mine was a beauty. Started at the crease, ran down the inside of the thigh, and by week two I looked like I had been kicked by a horse. Colours went purple, then that grim yellow green, then faded from the edges in.

No lump though, so I would not sit on that part quietly. The thing my discharge sheet was very clear about was to ring rather than wait if the site changed, and a lump that has parked itself for ten days counts as something to mention. Not panic, just mention.

#3Diane FarrowFounder(Joined Jan 2026 · 214 posts)August 14, 2026, 10:15 am

Frank, the picture you are describing, an enormous spreading bruise that outlives the recovery it came from, is the single most common thing people write to me about after their procedure, and it caught me out too. Mine ran from the crease to just above the knee and it was still faintly visible at six weeks.

The reason it surprises us is a bit of a trick of the whole business. The valve gets fixed on a beating heart and the breathlessness lifts within days, so the limiting factor early on is not your heart at all, it is a puncture in a large artery in your groin and the bruising that tracks down through the tissue from it. That is why the walking restrictions and the no heavy lifting rules are all about the leg rather than the chest. I have written the honest week by week in what recovery actually looks like.

On the lump specifically, I am not going to guess, and I would not want you to either. What I was told to watch for at the site was a lump that is growing, one that pulses, redness or heat, spreading pain, or a leg that goes pale, cold or numb, and to ring the same day for any of those rather than waiting for the follow up. A stable, cool, mildly tender lump under a fading bruise is a different animal from those, but stable and ten days old is still worth a phone call to the nurse, and they would far rather hear from you.

Do ring. And then come back and tell us, because at least three people reading this thread are staring at their own thigh right now.

#4Marlene K(Joined Mar 2026 · 31 posts)August 15, 2026, 1:58 pm

I had a lump. Mine was more like a small egg just below the crease and it turned up about a fortnight in. I did exactly what Diane said and rang, they had me in for a quick scan of the site the following day, and it was a collection of old blood that they were happy to leave alone to reabsorb.

Took about seven weeks to disappear completely and I stopped noticing it long before that. The scan was the thing that let me stop poking at it every evening, which was frankly the real benefit.

#5Edith R(Joined May 2026 · 12 posts)August 16, 2026, 9:31 am

Reading this from the other side of it, still waiting for my date. I had assumed the recovery worry would be about my heart and here you all are talking about legs.

Genuinely useful though. I would have been utterly unprepared for a bruise down to the knee and would have assumed something had gone badly wrong.

#6Ron Castellano(Joined Feb 2026 · 47 posts)August 17, 2026, 4:04 pm

Frank, one thing that helped mine along was being told to stop being a hero with the stairs. I was so pleased with the new breathing that I was going up and down all day in week two, and the site let me know about it.

The valve can take it. The puncture is the thing that needs you to be boring for a fortnight.

#7frankm1952(Joined Apr 2026 · 19 posts)August 20, 2026, 11:22 am

Rang Monday, seen Tuesday, scanned Tuesday afternoon. Old blood, same as Marlene, nothing that needs doing, come back if it grows or changes. The nurse said the yellow green stage means it is on the way out.

What I mainly feel is daft for sitting on it for ten days when the phone call took four minutes. Ron, I have also been caught out on the stairs, and my wife would like it recorded that she told me so.