What medications will I need to take? Medications play a critical part in the treatment of heart disease. Your Inova physician prescribes medications for specific reasons to help heart problems.
To find out more information about the specific medications you are taking, what they do, why they were indicated, their side effects, and contraindications, ask your pharmacist, nurses, or physician. Be sure to read and keep the medication sheets you will be given upon discharge.
Below are decsriptions of a few medications or classes of medications that are frequently prescribed to individuals with heart disease.
Aspirin Many studies have demonstrated that aspirin can reduce the death rate from heart attacks by 25 percent and the risk of second heart attacks by 20 to 30 percent. Aspirin inhibits blood clotting, helping to maintain blood flow through narrowed arteries. It should be given when a patient arrives in an emergency department with chest pain (or in the ambulance), and daily thereafter. Do not start taking aspirin without your physician's guidance. Doses vary (81-325 mg per day), and enteric coatings are available. Based on several factors, your Inova physician will find a product and dose that works best for you.
Click here to read about the Inova Heart Center's outcomes regarding aspirin and treatment of heart disease.
Beta Blockers Studies show that beta blockers are important drugs that reduce the incidence of future heart attacks, increase the oxygen supply to the heart muscle, decrease the incidence of certain heart rhythm disturbances, slow the heart rate and decrease the death rate after a heart attack by about 43 percent. Beta blockers should be started as early as possible after a heart attack, and therapy should continue for several years. Beta blockers are also used to treat individuals with angina, hypertension and fast heart rhythm disturbances.
Click here to read about the Inova Heart Center's outcomes regarding beta blockers and treatment of heart disease.
Lipid-lowering Medication Lipid-lowering medications reduce cholesterol levels for individuals with heart disease, prevent subsequent heart attacks and save lives.
Nitrates Nitroglycerine is extremely valuable in the acute treatment of heart attacks and for treatment of angina. Nitroglycerine is given intravenously, in the hospital, to dilate narrow coronary arteries and improve oxygen supply to the heart. It is also available, in tablet form, for patients who experience angina. Patients recovering from a heart attack should carry a bottle of nitroglycerine tablets at all times and use them as instructed if chest pain or their symptoms occur.
Thrombolytic Therapy The heart can survive longer than the brain without blood flow. However, if blood flow to the heart is not restored within two hours, the heart muscle is irreversibly damaged. The jeopardized heart muscle will die, form a scar and no longer contribute to the overall pumping of the heart.
To salvage heart muscle, blood flow must be restored (reperfusion). The faster treatment is initiated after the onset of heart attack symptoms, the more successful the reperfusion. This is why it is critical to get to the hospital at the first sign of heart attack. Prompt treatment makes the difference between heart muscle death and heart muscle salvage.
The most common non-invasive methods of reperfusing the heart muscle during a heart attack are thrombolytic or fibrinolytic therapies (clot-dissolving medications). Thrombolytic therapy agents such as tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) or Tenecteplase (TNKase) can be given as soon as a heart attack is diagnosed and contraindications are ruled out. If given within two hours of symptom onset, about 75 percent of patients benefit from reperfusion, thus reducing the degree of heart muscle damage and helping preserve the overall function of the heart.
Since timing is critical in salvaging heart muscle, all four hospitals at Inova measure timeliness of treatment for thrombolytic therapy. This measure is analyzed on a quarterly basis, and emergency departments develop action plans to improve it.