Guest guest Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Our 8 y.o. has had 3 heart surgeries resulting in an artificial mitral valve since he was 4. He has been on lovenox since then and we are currently trying to get him onto coumadin since it is believed that the lovenox has caused his bones to thin out. Has anyone else had this experience? Thanks Jim & Theresa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Hi My son Conor has had a prosthetic mitral valve since 4 months old after 4 heart ops. He was put on warfarin(Coumadin) straight away. I have a coaguchek monitor so that I can check his clotting rate at home. It was very hard to get his blood to the correct clotting level but it got easier as he got bigger. He is now 5 years old and had a bigger valve put in in September. The consultants discussed about giving him heparin injections when he was younger as his clotting was so difficult to control but decided against it as they said heparin was too risky with valve replacements. I am surprised that he wasn’t given warfarin instead. Let me know how you get on. Jo From: DownSyndromeInfoExchange [mailto:DownSyndromeInfoExchange ] On Behalf Of Jim Lanigan Sent: 19 December 2008 14:49 To: DownSyndromeInfoExchange Subject: [DownSyndromeInfoExchange] Lovenox Our 8 y.o. has had 3 heart surgeries resulting in an artificial mitral valve since he was 4. He has been on lovenox since then and we are currently trying to get him onto coumadin since it is believed that the lovenox has caused his bones to thin out. Has anyone else had this experience? Thanks Jim & Theresa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 19, 2008 Report Share Posted December 19, 2008 Jo; Thanks for the info. The doctors went to Lovenox first becuase of the fluctuations with coumadin. Everything went pretty well (except that the bruised easily) until he had a bone scan and it detected thinning throughout his body so they decided to change to coumadin. We've been doing coumadin for about a month and we still can't get his levels to stabalize. If we give him 4mg, he is too low, if we give him 4.5mg, he's too high and it appears that we can only go in .5 increments. How did you get the monitor? We're looking into that now, but haven't had much luck. Jim & Theresa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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