Cardiothoracic Surgery

What are the symptoms of heart and lung disease, & Who needs to consult a cardiothoracic surgeon?

Heart and lungs are intricately related and effectively function as a single unit, so the disease of one organ often tends to affect the other organ. Not surprisingly, symptoms of heart and lung diseases often tend to overlap. For example, a very common symptom of breathlessness could well be due to heart or lung disease either.

There is a wide variation in symptoms a patient will experience – ranging from asymptomatic to sudden death. However, most of the patients with heart or lung disease will have some symptoms or complaints, prompting a patient to seek medical attention.

Commonly encountered symptoms of heart or lung diseases are:

• Chest pain or heaviness or constricting sensation in the chest while doing some activity like walking or climbing stairs, sometimes pain is also felt in the left arm or jaw or neck, this pain usually gets relieved by rest.
• Severe pain in front of the chest, unrelated to any activity which doesn’t get relieved by routine treatment.
• Feeling of persistent acidity, belching, or gas after food, sometimes continuing for many hours and not relieved by routine home treatment of acidity.
• Loss of appetite, pain or heaviness in the upper abdomen after food, swelling of the abdomen.
• A forceful feeling of one’s heartbeat in the chest (palpitation), beats may be rapid or irregular. Sometimes a patient may feel the heart is beating too slowly.
• Excessive perspiration, excessive tiredness, easy fatigue, lack of energy.
• Swelling of legs or face especially in the morning and/or decreased urine output.
• Feeling shortness of breath on some exertion or in severe cases even at rest.
• Feeling of giddiness, light-headedness, or sometimes momentary loss of consciousness.
• Sudden paralysis of some part of the head or body, loss of vision or speech, the defect may be temporary or long-lasting.
• Coughing of blood or frothy sputum.
• Wheezing or whistling in the chest.
• Chronic, irritating, dry cough.
• Chronic cough may produce sputum that may be clear, white, yellow, or greenish.
• Hoarseness of voice.
• Frequent respiratory infections.
• Fever – low grade or high grade, daily or intermittent.
• Unintended weight loss.
• Failure to grow or reach milestones in children. Failure to gain weight or eat well.
• Unexplained feeling of unease, confusion, or loss of interest from life.
• The patient may not have any symptoms of heart or lung disease and it may be diagnosed solely on the basis of tests done. Such tests may be done before other major surgery, during routine health checkups, or pre-employment checkups.
• You may have been diagnosed with a surgically treatable condition of heart or lung and advised to meet a cardiothoracic surgeon for further guidance and treatment.
• Please note that none of these symptoms per se are a diagnostic of heart or lung disease. The same symptoms can occur in other disease conditions also. If you have any of these symptoms, it is better to consult your doctor and get investigated properly.