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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Mixing Heart Drugs Can Be Fatal! A standard combination of diuretics and blood-pressure drugs has been prescribed to heart-failure patients by their doctors. Such treatment has widely been used in United States following a research conducted in 1999 reporting that the medicines reduced deaths by 30 percent from heart failure. The said research excluded patients with damaged kidneys or other risk of developing high potassium levels. Nevertheless, giving such treatment without careful screening may cause thousands of deaths a year. This is the finding of a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004. According to the researchers, some doctors have not been examining their patients carefully before giving them drugs such as GD Searle’s Aldactone, which reduces fluid retention, along with drugs to lower blood pressure such as Bristol-Myers Squibb Co’s Capoten or King Pharmaceuticals’ Altace. As a result, there are more than 37,000 hospitalizations because of high potassium levels and 4,200 deaths a year in United States. Most cardiologists admitted that they do need to use these drugs but they have to use them carefully. In other words, they have to make sure they are treating the right people.
Aldactone originally sold by Pfizer’s Searle unit and is now available in generic version as spironolactone. Its function is to siphon extra fluid from the body. Heart drugs such as Capoten, Altace, Pfizer’s Accupril, and Biovail Corp’s Vasotec, called, ACE inhibitors and sold in less expensive generic forms, reduce blood pressure and generate more than US$1 billion in annual United States sales. In 2003, Pfizer won United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for Inspra, an improved version of spironolactone. But the sales have been sluggish at US$1 million in the second quarter of 2004. The officials from the drug manufacturers defended themselves by emphasizing that if the doctors can follow prescribing or label directions for their drugs, the benefits clearly outweigh the risk. Nevertheless, not all patients will benefit from a standard combination of drugs because people will respond differently even to the same combination of drugs. As a patient, you should pay attention and monitor carefully yourself. Consult your doctor if you feel uncomfortable after taking medicines prescribed by your doctor. The best possible way to avoid such mishap, I believe, is to maintain your body and heart healthy by adopting a heart-healthy lifestyle while you are still healthy. In this way, you may be able to stay away from taking drugs as long as you can.
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