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PERMANENT ARRHYTHMIA

What do you have to consider and of what to beware. Our family doctor for years precepts to my mother diuretics for "treatment" of high blood pressure but never told us that she should take in parallel drugs to prevent the loss of potassium from the body (one of the many harmful side effects of taking diuretics). Gradually, over the years, my mother started to develop paroxysmal (from time to time) arrhythmic heartbeat more and more oftenly. As a result our family doctor prescribed the intake of the drug Rytmonorm (confirmed by a cardiologist) to regulate the heartbeat. With time the situation with the pulse worsened although the drugs were supposed to "help" (actually they didn't) until one day my mother after another crisis was admitted to hospital and remained thereafter with permanent arrhythmia for life.

What had gone wrong? Now when I think about that incident again I become furious. The problem is that our family doctor and several cardiologists who my mother have been visiting for years for medical examinations complaining of arrhythmia had not "figured out" or rather deliberately didn't prescribed potassium retaining preparations to the diuretic of my mother and that is how with time the potassium completely depleted. This is the reason by the laws of physiology the heart to fall into arrhythmicity.

At the acceptance of my mother in the emergency center the day she has fallen into the state of permanent arrhythmia someone remembered to perform lab tests for potassium deficiency and found that it is almost zero. Since then my mother takes tablets of Spironolactone which is a potassium retaining diuretic but the permanent arrhythmia is already an everyday and irrevocable debilitating factor in her life that creates both physical pain and unbearable financial costs to maintain her life. The greatest insolence was when we learned that our family doctor also has been taking diuretics for years but he was adding for himselves guess what – Spironolactone of course!

If you happen to be in a permanent arrhythmia one day remember that it is mandatory to weekly monitor the physiological indicator of blood coagulation - INR (International Normalized Rate) which in healthy people ranges from 0.9 - 1.1 and for people on anticoagulant therapy (taking Sintrom, Digoxin, etc.) this ratio should be between 2-4. For control of coagulation I recommend you to buy the portable device of company Roche - CoaguChek XS. The measurement is performed through the use of test strips and is particularly convenient for the elderly and immobile people but if you cannot get this measuring instrument then any laboratory makes the test for couple of Euros.

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