A recent study has revealed that heart attack survivors must be careful of taking a group of painkillers known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) since doing so will only put them at greater risk for a second heart attack or death.
Explaining the seriousness of the risk and its implications on both patients and doctors, the lead author, Anne-Marie Schjerning Olsen, a fellow at the cardiology department at Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, said, “It is important to get the message out to clinicians taking care of patients with cardiovascular disease that NSAIDs are harmful, even several years after a heart attack.”
However, it must be said that, for their study’s findings, a controlled clinical trial wasn’t how they went about arriving at certain conclusions but in using data from the Danish national hospital and registries of patients above the age of 30 and who had suffered from a heart attack between 1997 and 2009. It was also found that almost 44% of the participants had received one prescription for NSAIDs.
Amongst these participants, the study analyzed the number of deaths related to NSAIDs by eliminating patients who ran the risk of dying or another heart attack due to factors such as other diseases or medications used apart from differences in age, gender, income and year of hospitalization.
All in all, it was concluded that in using NSAIDs, the risk of dying from a heart attack increased by 59% in the first year while being 63% higher after 5 years. Also, the authors of this study said that there is no ‘safe treatment’ window for NSAIDs and which has been corroborated in similar studies as well.
Chronic pain is not only physically exhausting but also emotionally depleting. While pain is a common symptom of numerous medical illnesses, proper management is crucial to maintain quality of life and overall health. For most, with the right equipment and care, they are able to significantly reduce their pain and reclaim their daily lives. Pain…
