HLSC 4412U Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Atrial Fibrillation, Varicose Veins, Exercise Prescription
Cardiovascular Disease Medications
Background
There are hundreds of different meds heart patients can use to improve some aspect of
cardiovascular function.
They can generally be broken down into a handful of categories.
Most heart patients are on 4 or 5 different meds from several categories. This allows us
to use smaller doses of a few meds, reducing the risk of side effects and leveraging the
combined benefit of many drugs doing different things.
While we categorize drugs based on the physiological effect they have a patient may be
prescribed a drug even if that physiological process is not impaired.
For example, statins improve cardiovascular risk by improving the cholesterol levels.
However, it is common to put someone on statins after a heart attack even if their
cholesterol is normal.
The reason for this is because research shows that being on statins reduces the risk of
death in anyone who has had a heart attack, not just those with bad cholesterol.
Categories
Anticoagulants
Antiplatelet therapy
Angiotensin interrupters
Beta blockers
Calcium channel blockers
Diuretics
Statins
Vasodilators
Anticoagulants
These drugs prevent the platelets in the blood from sticking to each other (known as
coagulating).
They aren’t very good at preventing platelets from sticking to other types of cells or
foreign objects like stents
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Document Summary
There are hundreds of different meds heart patients can use to improve some aspect of cardiovascular function. They can generally be broken down into a handful of categories. Most heart patients are on 4 or 5 different meds from several categories. This allows us to use smaller doses of a few meds, reducing the risk of side effects and leveraging the combined benefit of many drugs doing different things. While we categorize drugs based on the physiological effect they have a patient may be prescribed a drug even if that physiological process is not impaired. For example, statins improve cardiovascular risk by improving the cholesterol levels. However, it is common to put someone on statins after a heart attack even if their cholesterol is normal. The reason for this is because research shows that being on statins reduces the risk of death in anyone who has had a heart attack, not just those with bad cholesterol.
