What are heart pills?
Heart pills are generally understood to be either drugs that have an effect on the heart or drugs that can be prescribed for heart disease. Roughly divided, heart tablets can have the following effects:
- They can prevent cardiac arrhythmias (antiarrhythmics),
- Reduce the work that the heart has to do (blood pressure medication, beta blockers, drainage medication, vasodilating drugs such as nitro spray),
- Improve blood circulation in the heart (nitro spray, calcium antagonists such as nifedipine)
- Or increase the heart‘s power (digitalis, catecholamines).
Indications for heart tablets
Heart tablets are used for the following diseases. Coronary heart disease, which is caused by calcification of the heart vessels, leads to reduced performance, chest pain on exertion (angina pectoris) and heart attack. Heart failure is treated with drugs that reduce the work of the heart and resolve the symptoms of heart failure.
For cardiac arrhythmias, drugs are mainly used to prevent life-threatening heart rhythms. Other drugs used for heart disease are effective against the risk factors high blood pressure and high cholesterol. These include, for example, ACE inhibitors and statins.
Patients with heart failure have the problem that the heart cannot pump enough to transport blood from the venous system to the aorta. The main consequence is that the blood in the veins backs up, causing fluid to leak into the tissue. This becomes noticeable through fluid retention, especially in the legs, but also in the lungs and liver.
Storage in the liver leads to functional impairment, while storage in the lungs leads to poorer oxygen uptake and thus to shortness of breath. In addition, patients with cardiac insufficiency experience reduced performance, even bedriddenness. An important medication for cardiac insufficiency is water tablets (e.g. Lasix®), so that water can be excreted.
In addition, digitalis is still used today, which increases the strength of the heart, but is very dangerous if overdosed. Beta-blockers, which reduce the effect of adrenaline on the heart, are particularly effective in stopping the progression of heart failure. Although this initially leads to a further decrease in performance as adrenaline increases the strength of the heart, it prevents the heart from being over-stimulated, which in the long term further deteriorates the function of the organ.
Blood pressure medications are also important, as too high blood pressure is a heavy burden on the heart. Various drugs (antiarrhythmic drugs) can be given to treat cardiac arrhythmia. In the case of atrial fibrillation, the atria can no longer move in a coordinated fashion, which reduces the heart’s performance and increases the risk of stroke.
Drugs that can correct atrial fibrillation are digitalis and beta blockers. If the atrial fibrillation is persistent, patients should take blood thinners (e.g. Aspirin, Marcumar®) to reduce the risk of stroke. Other cardiac dysrhythmias affect the ventricle and are therefore much more dangerous, since without coordinated beating of the ventricles, a person dies within a short time.
Especially after heart attacks, the electrical excitation of the heart is often disturbed, which can lead to dangerous rapid cardiac arrhythmias. There are a number of antiarrhythmic drugs that can be used for this purpose. The most effective of these drugs, amiodarone, however, has a number of serious side effects.
This is why the use of implantable defibrillators is becoming more and more widespread. They detect a dangerous heart rhythm and use a current signal to bring the heart back to a normal rhythm. Cardiac arrhythmias with too slow a rhythm are usually treated with a pacemaker.
