Three weeks after TAVR and the breathlessness is creeping back on the stairs. Was fine in week one. Is the new valve failing already?

#1frankm1952(Joined Apr 2026 · 19 posts)July 27, 2026, 9:36 pm

I do not want to be the man who posts about every little thing but this one has me properly rattled. Had my TAVR three weeks ago tomorrow. The first week home was extraordinary, I kept going up the stairs just because I could, breathing like a man of fifty. Everyone said it, my wife said it, I looked ten years younger.

This week it has gone backwards. Stairs and I am puffing at the top again. Not like before the procedure, nowhere near, but the puffing is BACK and it was not there ten days ago. Legs feel heavy, I am asleep in the chair by three in the afternoon, and yesterday I felt my heart go a bit skittish for a minute or two, like it had missed a step. Then normal.

My head is going straight to the worst place. Has the valve slipped. Has it stopped working. They kept me in an extra night for a rhythm thing and I am now convinced the two are connected and nobody is telling me. The follow up is not for another three weeks and I do not know whether this is a ring them thing or a stop being soft thing. Did anyone else get WORSE in week three after being so good in week one.

#2TwoNightsTerry(Joined Feb 2026 · 63 posts)July 28, 2026, 7:50 am

Yes. Almost to the day, and I had forgotten it until I read yours. Week one I was a marvel, week three I was flat as a pancake and back to pausing on the landing. Mine turned out to be a mixture of doing far too much on the strength of the new breathing and, the nurse reckoned, running on empty after the bruise.

But I am one bloke on a forum. A heart that misses a step is a ring them thing in my book, not a stop being soft thing. They would rather hear about it on a Tuesday than in A and E on a Saturday.

#3Ron Castellano(Joined Feb 2026 · 47 posts)July 28, 2026, 7:14 pm

The skittish minute is the bit I would mention when you ring, Frank, and I would mention the extra night for the rhythm in the same breath so they join the dots. I had the pacemaker fitted after mine, and the tiredness I got at about your stage was a settings thing that took them ten minutes to adjust at a device check. Not saying that is you. Saying the rhythm side is something they can actually look at, not something you have to guess about from the chair.

#4Diane FarrowFounder(Joined Jan 2026 · 214 posts)July 29, 2026, 10:18 am

frankm1952 said:

Has the valve slipped. Has it stopped working.

Frank, the direct answer first: breathlessness that comes back after it had gone, together with a heart that feels like it missed a step, is worth a phone call to the valve clinic this week rather than a wait for the follow up. Not because I think the valve has failed, but because the things that commonly cause exactly what you describe are the things the team can check quickly, and most of them are fixable. A valve that has "slipped" or stopped working three weeks in is a genuinely rare event; it is not where I would put my money, and it is not where your team will start either.

Here is what I learned writing the recovery piece, and what I lived through myself. The breathlessness lifted for me almost the moment I woke up, and that is the trap: the heart is fixed on day one, but the rest of you has just had a procedure, a bleed into the thigh, a few nights of poor sleep and a great deal of adrenaline. People are home within 1 to 3 days and feeling better within weeks, but "weeks" is doing real work in that sentence. I overdid it badly in week two, walked the hill to the shops as if nothing had happened, and had a flat, heavy legged, sleep in the chair fortnight afterwards that frightened me in the same way yours is frightening you. The week by week of that, and why the groin sets the pace rather than the heart, is in what TAVR recovery actually looks like.

The reasons the team will think about are more specific than "overdoing it", though. A big bruise like the ones people describe on this board means blood lost into the leg, and a low blood count on its own will make stairs harder and afternoons sleepy; it is a simple blood test. A new rhythm change is the other one, and the skittish minute is why I would not sit on this. Atrial fibrillation can appear for the first time in the weeks after TAVR, and it makes people breathless and washed out before they ever notice it as palpitations. The conduction delay they kept you in for is a separate thing on the same wiring, and around 10 to 20 percent of people end up with a pacemaker after TAVR because of it, which is something they will want to recheck on an ECG anyway. None of these is the valve failing; all of them are the sort of thing that a phone call turns into an appointment. What can go wrong with the valve itself, and how uncommon each thing is, is set out plainly in the risks and complications of TAVR, and I would read it for reassurance rather than alarm.

Two practical things. Ring, and say the three facts in order: puffing back on the stairs after it had gone, a minute of irregular heartbeat, and the extra night on the monitor. And if between now and then you are breathless sitting still, wake up gasping, notice your ankles swelling, get chest pain, or feel faint, that is same day, not this week. Whether any of this is your rhythm, your blood count, or simply a man of 74 who went up the stairs too many times in week one is for your own team to sort out, and I would far rather they told you than I guessed.

#5Marlene K(Joined Mar 2026 · 31 posts)July 30, 2026, 1:45 pm

Frank, the asleep by three in the afternoon part was my blood count, for what it is worth. Iron tablets and a fortnight and it lifted. The nurse said the thigh bruise had cost me more than anyone had realised. Ring them.

#6frankm1952(Joined Apr 2026 · 19 posts)August 8, 2026, 9:41 am

Rang Thursday morning, seen Friday. Blood test came back on the low side, iron started, and the ECG showed the same slight delay as before, no worse, no atrial fibrillation on the trace. They have given me a little monitor to wear for a week to catch the skittish minutes if they come back, and the follow up echo has been moved forward. The registrar said almost word for word what Diane said, that the valve is the least likely culprit and the leg and the bloods are the most likely.

Stairs already a bit better this morning, though I am under strict instructions from my wife and the nurse to stop treating the landing as a fitness test. Will report back after the monitor.