What questions should I ask my doctor if I am diagnosed with a heart condition?
If you're diagnosed with heart disease, you want to be certain that you get the information from your doctor that will let you do the best possible job in managing heart disease. There are many people living with heart disease in this country who are participating fully in the activities of normal daily life, and you wouldn't even know that they had heart disease if they didn't tell you that. You want to know specifically what your diagnosis is, and you want to know what your physician thinks will happen to you in the future. Almost always, with that information, he'll give you advice about how to take advantage of both lifestyle and medications that can help you to do the best possible with your heart disease, and to have it affect you as little as possible. You'll want to also ask your doctor if your particular form of heart disease will affect others in the family. Is this a heart disease that has inherited aspects to it, where there's a genetic predisposition to the disease, so that you can give the best advice possible to other family members, in particular, your children. And in some cases, depending on the kind of heart disease, it may be important to have your children tested as well, so that they can do the best they can to prevent having any complications of, or early events of heart disease as they live out their lives.
