I'm worried the cardiologist missed something

[Alice1]

I'm 19 and for the past year have been getting ectopic beats. I've had some ecgs and 2 24 hour monitors in which a few different types of 'extra heartbeats' were picked up from two different parts of my heart. I've recently had an appointment with a cardiologist who said I'm fine, just get harmless ectopic and dismissed my concerns about eptopics bought on with excersice/ faster than I'm comfortable with heart rate when I'm not exercising very vigorously/ light-headedness during exercise occasionally and discharged me from the outpatient unit.

I previously had an echo that showed what they thought was a small hole between the upper two chambers of my heart and the cardiologist appointment I had 3 months ago said they didn't have access to the scans for some reason (I saw a different cardiologist this time, don't know why) and he'll look into it. But nothing has been looked into and I stupidly didn't ask and now I'm discharged.

I'm worried they've missed something and I've been getting a lot of ectopics recently and I just am really stressed about dying.
What should I do please.x

[Aaahhfreakout]

I think you need to try and contact the cardiologist who said he'd look into it. If it's discovered there is no hole, then that might help you feel at least a little better. Also, from what I've read a small hole tends not to be a problem usually.

It's one of those unfortunate things that the symptoms of heart problems and stress are so similar.

The logical thing for them to have done is to give you an exercise stress test if you have complaints about symptoms during exercise. So I'd say "I get symptoms during exercise, do you have any tests for that?" without telling them you know they do.

Hopefully, you can get to do this simple -- but rather vigorous -- test and they can put your mind at ease about exercise symptoms.

[Alice1]

I think you need to try and contact the cardiologist who said he'd look into it. If it's discovered there is no hole, then that might help you feel at least a little better. Also, from what I've read a small hole tends not to be a problem usually.

It's one of those unfortunate things that the symptoms of heart problems and stress are so similar.

The logical thing for them to have done is to give you an exercise stress test if you have complaints about symptoms during exercise. So I'd say "I get symptoms during exercise, do you have any tests for that?" without telling them you know they do.

Hopefully, you can get to do this simple -- but rather vigorous -- test and they can put your mind at ease about exercise symptoms.

Thank you for replying. I was meant to have the same appointment with him but as keeps happening the doctors I want to just see regularly keep 'moving practices' and they just don't tell me which can be frustrating.

Do you know if you can request copies of your scans and tests like echos and 24 hour ecgs to print out or have on disk? Do they do this fast?

That's what they told me the first time too, that they just monitor it, so hopefully it'll be OK, but you google things and it comes up with 'heart disease' and 'congenital heart defect' and how eptopics are more of a risk factor and all these things and it just scares me sometimes.

I will ask them that, thank you.

[Aaahhfreakout]

I'm not sure about copies of results. I do know some patients get a report summary page for the 24 hour monitors.

Atrial septal defect is the condition I assume they mean they might have seen on the scan, by the way.