Abstract
Aim
To assess how well heart failure patients tolerate spironolactone in routine clinical practice.
Design
Retrospective analysis of 226 patients attending a specialist heart failure clinic.
Results
One hundred and thirty of 226 (57.5%) patients tried spironolactone at least once. Forty-four of 130 (33.8%) discontinued spironolactone due to side-effects after a mean of 11.1 months; 59/141 (41.8%) trials of spironolactone resulted in at least one side-effect; therapy was stopped in 30/141 (21.3%) trials due to raised potassium or creatinine. Significant risk factors for raised potassium/creatinine were age and baseline potassium level.
Conclusions
Potentially serious side-effects are common despite appropriate use of spironolactone.
To assess how well heart failure patients tolerate spironolactone in routine clinical practice.
Design
Retrospective analysis of 226 patients attending a specialist heart failure clinic.
Results
One hundred and thirty of 226 (57.5%) patients tried spironolactone at least once. Forty-four of 130 (33.8%) discontinued spironolactone due to side-effects after a mean of 11.1 months; 59/141 (41.8%) trials of spironolactone resulted in at least one side-effect; therapy was stopped in 30/141 (21.3%) trials due to raised potassium or creatinine. Significant risk factors for raised potassium/creatinine were age and baseline potassium level.
Conclusions
Potentially serious side-effects are common despite appropriate use of spironolactone.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 554-557 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 27 Jul 2004 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2004 |
Keywords
- Aged
- Congestive
- Heart failure
- Spironolactone