W.p.w Syndrome

Hi there;
i am sorry I haven't got back to you yet. My husband has wpw, and he has a lot of trouble with it. We don't have much information but we do know that when you have the surgery to correct/eliminate it, they can miss some of it, (if that makes any sense). It took 32 years to be detected!!
My husband has quite a few "episodes" where his heart will race, and he is short of breath. Do you experience this?
I wish I could tell you more but we really don't know anymore.

please let me know if you have any more information, we'd really appricate it!
thanks

Well I don't ever have any problems with it except if I am doing any cardio activity. I can't do any kind of long distance running or any kind of hard physical work of any sort. I have really learned to live with it. But it does impact what I can and can do. Some people feel I don't do things out of pure lazyness but don't realize I have a heart condition. I do know that I can't take any kind of medications to slow down my heart rate like digoxin or anything along that sort of medication. I am suppost to were a medical alert but it is too expensive to mail away so I wear and old necklace that says see wallet card. I just got to hope that they see it. And that the doctors realize what it is. I have actually found more doctors now that I have moved to ontario that know what it is and have atleast herd of it. I still don't know any of the long terms effects. Whether I have better chances about seeing about surgery now or whether I will be okay for the rest of my life? I am not sure if it gets worse as you get older and tell you the it does scare me. I don't make a big deal about it to friends and family cause I don't want the attention but I would like to find out more. Get back to me if you know anything more that what I do or even know where to maybe look for more info?

Thanks kim

I've just been diagnosed with wpw after years of thinking it was panic disorder. I've had an ablation. It was a 5 1/2 hour long procedure (not all of them are this long!) they sent catheters through my neck and leg and went all around my heart to find the bad circuit. During the procedure they found that I have two bad circuits. They were able to burn/stop one of them but not able to correct the second one because it was too close to my natural node and may have resulted in the need for a pace maker. However, now I now have a moderate murmur and I believe this was caused by the procedure -- I changed dr's after the procedure because I wasn't able to understand my "electrician" because he had poor english and was not good at explaining next steps. So when I went to a heart clinic my new Dr. Immediately told me about my murmur. I had an echo and found that it is a moderate murmur. In all the years of going to cardiologists, stress tests, ekg's, etc. No one has ever told me that I had a murmur so I believe it had to be caused from the ablation. Has anyone ever heard of this? What should I do? The previous dr's never mentioned a murmur? Did they need to inform me that they caused a murmur during the procedure?

Hi.

I have suffered from the symptoms of wpw since I was 4,i attended the hospital where I was told the symptoms were just bad integiston. Until the age of 8 I believed this was what was wrong with me until one day I got a severe attack and passed out,it took hours for me to come around, eventually I came around after 5 hours, within ten minutes I had suffered another attack, I received electric shocks but they were not able put my heart in normal rythm,i was given 2 hours to live,6 hours lated my heart came back into normal rythm!Following this ordeal they discovered I suffered from wpw.

I suffered an attack to this severity once a week and minor attacks on a daily basis. I had an ablation performed when I was 11, but this did not work, at the age of 16 I had another ablation performed, this ablation worked.

I am now 18 years old and wpw has returned, not as severe as before,it is currently being investigated

Here to tell you that I am walking proof that wpw can be resolved - successfully.

I was diagnosed at 13, after an episode prompted a trip to the er. For the next 5-years I was treated with steadily increasing doses of beta blockers until I was 17. At 17, I had a v-tach episode, browned out in gym class. Luckily, I was able to make the trip to the er and get it all documented on an ecg - it was sent to the cardiologist by fax, which was promptly followed by a phone call from the Dr. Ordering (not asking) me to get to the hospital asap. After lots of tests, it was determined that my condition had turned ugly - they decided to do open heart surgery (i missed the development of the electro ablation treatment by about a year!). I had the surgery, with a slight murmur and skip beats as a badge of courage. I have a couple scars, mental and physical, but no more rapid heart rates!

The bad news from having open chest surgery vs. Electro ablations: I have been fine until this year, when I collapsed at the gym with ventricular tachecardia - needed the defibrilator to bring me back and everything. The root cause was a crimping of a artery on the rear of my heart, from the replacement of my heart into my chest cavity. The lack of blood to a small portion of muscle caused a dead area. The dead area captured an electrical signal and shorted out my heart = bad news. Dr.'s say it was a fluke that it happened at all - but I am lucky that way! Today, I take a beta blocker (toprol xl) and have an icd (internal cardio defibrilator) - prognosis is I will be around for alot more years.

I am healthy and happy and continue to live a very active life style including going back to the gym - no limitations on my activities (except dishes and windows, I tell my wife).

Best of luck to everyone.