Thanoshi Balasuriya
May 18, 2014
Link: http://www.hngn.com/articles/31583/20140518/sleeping-pills-increases-cardiovascular-risk-heart-failure-patients-study.htm
Author: Vishakha Sonawane
Published: May 18, 2014
Summary: In Japan, scientists did a study on heart failure patients. The patients were tracked after being discharged from the hospital. The endpoint for their tracking was if and when they had a cardiovascular event or were taken back to the hospital for a heart failure. Since not being able to sleep is common with heart failure patients, many had sleeping pills prescribed for them. However, these pills were shown to be worse for the patients with the data collected by the scientists. It seems that the sleeping pills cause cardiovascular events to take place. Many of the patients that were prescribed sleeping pills were readmitted to the hospital within the 180 days of tracking, whereas most other patients without the pills were found not to have any attacks within those 180 days. Obviously, this is a serious problem for patients with heart failure, especially because it is extremely common to want to sleeping pills with the condition of heart failure, which causes sleeping problems. The scientists plan to do a larger study, so that they can figure out the exact processes going on with the sleeping pills
Connection: In class, we have been studying the circulatory system. The heart is a major organ in the body, and plays a key role in the circulatory system. Also, we recently watched the presentation on the circulatory system, where all of the diseases were heart diseases. Heart failure is a common form of heart disease as well. With this study, scientists can possibly figure out how heart failure works, the exact causes and problems caused, etc. Also, if sleeping pills can cause more problems with the heart, there may be other medicines that might have fatal side effects as well. The chemical composition of these medicines may affect the heart drastically, affecting the whole circulatory system and body, ultimately causing homeostatic imbalance.
What "cardiovascular events" occured that sent the patients back to the hospital? Heart failure again or something else?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Chemocare.org, a cardiovascular event is basically anything that causes damage to the heart muscle. So, yes heart failure and heart attacks are common types of cardiovascular events, but they are most definitely not the only things that are considered as ones.
DeleteIs there a specific medication that is known to cause this more than others. If so, what ingredient/ part of it makes it worse for your cardiovascular system?
ReplyDelete