Heart Care Medicines
Heart is the most important organ in our body and every year millions of people fall prey to heart attack. A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a section of heart muscle is blocked due to blockage in any part of the heart. If the flow of blood isn't restored immediately, the section of heart muscle is damaged due to lack of oxygen. As a result, the person will die.
But thanks to rapid progress made by the medical science, there are lots of medical treatments for heart attack. Treatment or medication is quite effective if started within an hour of the beginning of symptoms. A heart attack can be confirmed with an electrocardiogram (ECG) that shows the electrical activity of the heart, and blood tests. Oxygen is given with a face mask and pain killer is administered, normally with an injection of diamorphine combined with an anti-sickness medicine.
There are lot of generic medicines or generic drugs for heart patients. These drugs may be available in all leading pharmacies or other generic pharmacy. At the coronary care unit, a slow intravenous injection of a drug called a thrombolytic is normally administered to dissolve the clot in the coronary artery. However, it may have some side effect.
Other drugs such as beta-blockers (eg atenolol) or glyceryl trinitrate may also be given to ensure more blood supply to the heart by widening blood vessels. Drugs are administered right after the start of a heart attack may include aspirin, thrombolytic therapy (clot busters), heparin, other antiplatelet drugs or any combination of the above. Other drugs, administered during or after a heart attack lessen the heart's work, improve the functioning of the heart, widen or dilate blood vessels, decrease your pain, and guard against any life-threatening heart rhythms. Your doctor will prescribe the appropriate medications for you.
After an attack, your heart may not be able to pump blood around your body as efficiently as before. This phenomenon is called heart failure. After a heart attack, normally an angiogram is carried out that involves injecting a dye into the blood so that the coronary blood vessels show up on an X-ray. In case your arteries are narrowed, you may also be treated with angioplasty or coronary artery bypass grafting. Angioplasty involves widening the artery by inflating a balloon in the narrowed coronary artery. Sometimes a wire mesh tube called a stent is inserted to hold it open.
Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is a type of open-heart surgery, which is sometimes carried out if angioplasty doesn't yield any result. It involves rerouting the blood around the affected coronary artery, using a replacement section of a blood vessel. This helps people with dangerously narrow coronary arteries, especially if the left side of the heart is not pumping well.
People who suffer from heart attack need to take daily medicines over the long term, prescribed by the physicians. Doctors normally prescribe a low daily dose of aspirin (around 75mg) for all those who have had heart-attacks. Then, a range of other medicines may be used to promote blood flow, widen narrowed arteries, to give the heart less work to do or to make it pump more effectively. These include beta-blockers, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and glyceryl trinitrate. Other drugs, named statins, are used to reduce cholesterol levels in the bloodstream.