High Blood Pressure after Radiosurgery?

[lalala80]

After my radiation treatment my blood pressure seems to be rather high.  It is not quite at the high blood pressure level yet, but it has consistently been around 132/82 which is really quite high for me and higher than the 120/70 it was before the treatment.  Maybe it is the stress, but I have been exercising and eating potassium rich foods and it still seems to stay rather high.  I also take it in the morning when it is supposed to be the lowest.  Is this a possible temporary side effect of the radiation?  Or maybe it is the stress but I was pretty stressed before the treatment and surprisingly my  blood pressure right before I had the radiosurgery was only 125/70, still pretty consistent.  Has anyone else had experience with this?

[Jim Scott]

I haven't had this experience and haven't read that post-radiation AN patients routinely have elevated blood pressure after treatment.  However, because of your (quite natural) concern, I suggest you ask your doctor about this.

Jim

[chloes mema]

I vaguely remember reading a post not too long ago that someone was experiencing high blood pressure after their treatment; can't remember if it was surgery or radiation. 

You might trying doing a search for high blood pressure on this forum.

Good luck.  Hopefully it's just the stress of life right now.   

Karen

[mk]

I remember that a forum member, "sunfish" developed severe blood pressure issues immediately following CK. I don't remember if she was able to establish a link between the two. You may want to look up her posts.
She did post an update recently:
http://www.anausa.org/smf/index.php?topic=16733.msg979739151#msg979739151

Marianna

[sunfish]

Here I am . . .

Well, my blood pressure situation was a little more drastic.  First of all, if you have/are still taking steroids within the past several weeks, then that's probably why your blood pressure is high.

My bp had routinely been 115/75 before CK.  I had one bout of higher bp about 12 years previous, but had a lot of stress then.  Week of CK, blood pressure went up to 160/106.  But I had been taking decadron, and nurses said not to worry, it was just a temporary side effect of the procedure and meds, and it would go down.

Well, I was put on bp meds the week after CK, and have never been off them since.  If I miss a dose, it starts creeping back up right away.  I've been through about a half dozen increasing med changes to get it under control.  Yes, I'm a little heavier than I was (only 10 pounds overweight), but I'm still physically active.  My goal this year is to get in much better physical shape, and see if that helps.

I AM NOT A DOCTOR.  That being said, I've done LOTS of online research, and this is what I've learned: Your blood pressure is controlled, in part, by something called baroreceptors in your carotid artery (neck).  They can definitely be affected by standard radiation treatments.  Supposedly, there shouldn't be enough radiation exposure to these receptors in stereotactic radiosurgery  for an AN. Also, my AN was in the cerebellopontine angle, real cozy with the brainstem.  This is also an area with lots of nerves involved in blood pressure.  My strong assumption, at this point, is that the baroreceptors (most likely) or these other nerves were affected somehow by CK.

The only person who believes me is my primary care physician.  I've resisted the impulse to follow up on this through the couple specialty clinics there are in the U.S. - I'm not sure that finding the reason for my high bp will help much in treating it, and I'm tired of doctors.

I'll bet your blood pressure will gradually stabilize again.  Keep us posted!