Heart Medications
The development of these medications have helped dramatically decrease death rates from cardiovascular disease in the United States and other developed countries.
Heart Medications Articles
People who take beta blockers (which lower the heart rate and blood pressure) may not be able to reach their target heart rate during exercise. Instead, they can use the perceived exertion scale to assess how hard they’re exercising.
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New guidelines for managing atrial fibrillation (afib) now advise most people to take novel oral anticoagulant drugs rather than warfarin to prevent a stroke. Aspirin is no longer recommended for stroke prevention for afib. Another change highlights the benefits of weight loss, which can reduce afib episodes and keep the condition from worsening. The guidelines also more strongly recommend a procedure called ablation (which destroys faulty electric pathways in the heart) for people with afib symptoms who also have systolic heart failure.
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An experimental nasal spray shows promise for quickly treating an abnormally fast heart rhythm known as supraventricular tachycardia.
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Aspirin therapy can help prevent a second heart attack and stroke, but for otherwise healthy older men, its use depends on their 10-year risk for a heart attack or stroke as determined by their doctor.
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Most people with atrial fibrillation take anti-clotting drugs to prevent strokes. For those who cannot take these drugs because of a high risk of bleeding, a tiny, basket-like device implanted in the part of the heart that traps clots may be an alternative.
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Taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) routinely over a long time period can increase the risk of heart disease. Although this danger is greatest in people with heart disease, it’s also present in people without any signs of the disease. A large study suggested that the prescription-only drug celecoxib might be less risky than two other widely used over-the-counter drugs, ibuprofen and naproxen. But limitations in the study created some uncertainty about the findings. People who take any NSAID should always take the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time.
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In a large, long-term clinical trial, people taking the diuretic chlorthalidone had significantly fewer hip fractures than those taking the calcium-channel blocker amlodipine or the ACE inhibitor lisinopril.
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Statins have been a mainstay of cholesterol-lowering therapy for over three decades. Today, nearly a quarter of all adults over age 40 take medication to treat high cholesterol, and most often it’s a statin drug. However, with such widespread use, especially among people who may have other cardiovascular risk factors, there is a distinct risk of an unwanted interaction between a statin and another medication.
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Certain cholesterol-lowering medications—namely, ezetimibe (Zetia) and drugs known as bile acid binders—also appear to be effective at lowering cholesterol and reducing the risk of serious cardiovascular events.
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Medications such as aspirin, statins, ACE inhibitors, and beta blockers are prescribed to certain patients to lower the chance of a first or repeat heart attack. New research shows that they also may reduce the severity of attacks that do occur.
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