“Does a heart murmur affect anesthesia?”

Thanks for this very interesting question. A murmur is the result of non laminar blood flow like water flowing over a stone in a stream. Murmur during the contracting phase of the heart might be caused by obstruction to flow out of the heart or flow across a poorly closed intracardiac valve - ejection or regurgitation murmurs. These are just a few of the important concerns in evaluating heart ️ murmurs! Your anesthesiologist will definitely want to know what type of murmur you have and if anesthesia will worsen your heart function. You did not mention what kind of surgery or anesthesia that is being considered, nor did you mention any type of clinical symptoms that might foretell difficult with general anesthesia! Fortunately, there are non-invasive painless tests - echocardiography - that can readily evaluate cardiac murmurs and function with a high degree of accuracy. Please talk with your medical team so that they can perform a proper medical evaluation and specific diagnostic test.
Again, thanks for this interesting question. I hope that it points you in the right direction.

Irwin M. Best, MD, MBA,FACS

Depends on the murmur you have. Anesthesia affects your haemodynamics and if you have a pathological murmur we need to maintain the haemodynamic goals for that particular pathology. There are also complications of having a long standing, untreated murmur that can affect you have an anesthetic.