SHREVEPORT, La. – If you have heart failure, doctors warn that discontinuing prescribed medications greatly increases risk for heart-related death, even if patients report feeling better.
Heart failure medications don’t just treat the symptoms of the disease, they also help strengthen the heart and improve how well it pumps blood over time. But that improvement can create a false sense of security.
When patients feel better, some stop taking their medications all together, and Dr. Syed Siddiqullah, a heart failure specialist with Ochsner LSU Health, says that can quickly undo months of patient’s progress.
“Unfortunately, we end up seeing them back in the clinic or the emergency room with all of the symptoms of a heart failure, like shortness of breath, weak, you know, dizzy, lightheaded and then sometimes filings. And when you repeat the echocardiogram, the ultrasound of the heart, the heart function has declined back to what it was before. Even worse than that,” Siddiqullah said…