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Suffering from heart pain? Don’t go for pain relievers

By jeremyc | June 10, 2011

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association points out that taking nonsteroidal antiflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) post heart attack increases your risk of experiencing another attack within a week of operation by 45%. Use of such drugs further increases the risks of another attack within three months of surgery by 33%. It seems that NSAIDS can be equally harmful for healthy people as well as people with ischemic hearts.

The main components of NSAIDS are ibuprofen (23%), diclofenac(13.4%), rofecoxib(4.%) and celecoxib (4.8%), indocin, voltaren and selective COX-2 inhibitor celebrex. Diclofenac users are likely to be at a three times more risk as compared to non-users. This revelation has led FDA to issue a warning against use of diclofenac especially after a bypass surgery. The study, however, confirms that naproxen usage does not bring about cardio vascular attack even though it might lead to gastrointestinal bleeding.

The researchers collected data from Danish National Patient registry. Out of 83,675 Danish adults with an average age of 68 and all having their first heart attack between the years 1997 and 2006, about 42% of the survivors had taken NSAIDs. The findings brought to the light the 2007 Association’s report claiming the risks behind taking NSAIDS among heart patients and advising the use of it only under unavoidable circumstances for the shortest period possible in negligible amounts.

This is because NSAIDs stop the production of COX enzymes. Cerebex a common COX-2 enzyme increases the rate of blood clotting while COX 1 type has a slow reaction. Aspirin, a type of NSAID that thins the blood, blocks the COX-1 enzyme.

Dr.Atman of Harvard Medical School, Boston who spearheaded the study, firmly believes that NSAIDs can be prescribed to patients suffering from severe pains like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. But it does not curtail the risk factor. Physical therapy, proper diet or other compositions of pain killers should be tried before surrendering to NSAIDs, he says.”Some patients have such debilitating arthritis that we need to work down the list [of NSAIDs], recognizing as we get down the list we’re getting into increasingly dangerous territory,” Antman said. If they’re already on one, it must be seen that they do not stay on it. Many doctors do not have the habit of monitoring the medication use therefore patients stay on long after attacks.

However, the findings of the study are not beyond doubts because of its observational nature. Random trials are more likely to bring a better rate of accuracy to the research in the future.

Topics: | Heart |

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