Off-Label High Blood Pressure Drugs...

Did you know that any type of surgery increases your
heart's need for oxygen? Well, that's not hard to
believe but this is . . . New research has found that
doctors are passing out high blood pressure meds (Beta
Blockers) after surgery, which increases the risk of stroke
or even death.

It all sounds innocent enough really, but is it worth
betting your life on? Surgeons claim they want to reduce
the strain on your heart from its efforts to increase
oxygen. 

But this is a natural function of your body's automatic
repair and regeneration process, why even mess with it? If
your body needs more oxygen to heal does it make sense to
chemically slow the heart?

Don't they sell enough drugs in this country? I mean
seriously folks, the only business that seems to be
prospering these days are the drug companies, the bio-tech
industry and the oil companies.

Perhaps it's time to step away from things that have
proven more harmful than helpful and return to a saner,
less expensive and naturally safer solution for some of
these issues.

Single-pay healthcare would be nice as long as people still
have the right to seek natural alternatives to radiation,
the knife and chemical treatments. 

Imagine some of the problems that would simply go away, as
if they never were. But as it is, I see nothing but big
companies making thousands of billions of dollars off the
sick and elderly . . . and people aren't getting any
better either. Debt, disease and death are only on the
rise.

Know what I mean? 

Approximately 100 million people have a major "non-heart"
surgery every year in the US. Just imagine how many people
that are given Beta-Blockers to reduce the strain on their
oxygen-starved hearts and have a stroke or die because of
it . . . the real numbers would shock you.

Don't enough people die from "properly" prescribed drugs? 

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
adverse drug reactions from drugs that are "properly"
prescribed and "properly" administered cause about
106,000 deaths per year, making "properly" prescribed
drugs the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S.  

Other than for the sake of selling more drugs and
increasing Big Pharma profits, there is no justification
for this. It's no wonder insurance rates are so extremely
unaffordable for so many people.

Do I sound a little annoyed? You bet I am. If you're not
upset, you're simply not paying attention yet.

The technical term for this over prescribing is called
"off-label" use. Rarely will a doctor prescribe an
off-label prescription for an office visit, it happens but
not nearly as often as off-label prescriptions from
specialists and surgeons.

Here's a snippet from an ambulatory study I found:

Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys from
1999 to 2002 were used in this study. 

Physician visits at which beta-blockers were prescribed
(beta-blocker visits) were included and classified as
"within-label" or "off-label visits" according to
whether an approved indication for the beta-blocker was
coded for the visits.

A total of 3349 million visits were made to office-based
physicians during the study period. About 65% of all visits
were prescribed with at least one medication (that's 2167
million medication visits!).

Beta-blockers were prescribed in 5.9% (127.3 million) of
all medication visits in the years 1999 to 2002. The 3 most
frequently prescribed beta-blockers in this study were
atenolol, metoprolol, and propranolol. 

    * The proportions of off-label use among beta-blocker
visits were 44.3% (1999), 56.3% (2000), 62.3% (2001), and
46.9% (2002); overall, 52.0% (That's 66.2 million
off-label prescriptions!).


Did I get your attention yet?

About 11% (75.7 million) of these off-label uses were
prescribed to patients with concomitant (all ready taking
other drugs) conditions that required judicious use of
beta-blockers. Specialists, such as cardiologists, were
more likely to prescribe beta-blockers for off-label use
than primary care physicians (odds ratio, 2.147; 95% CI,
2.1464-2.1473).

Conclusion:

This study found that the off-label use rate of
beta-blockers was higher than what has been previously
reported for other diseases and medications. Compared with
visits made to general practitioners, visits made to
"specialists" (surgeons) were more likely to be
prescribed off-label use of beta-blockers. Future studies
are needed to understand the legal, economic, and clinical
impact of off-label use.

Anyway, I thought this justified a slightly longer than
usual letter this week. Thanks for letting me share this
with you. Bottom line is too many drugs are being
prescribed for no good reason when safer more affective
alternatives are being ignored.

My Mother suffered from a drug-induced stroke, so this
whole issue affects me directly and personally.

Remember Hypocrites said, "First do no harm"

==>>  http://tinyurl.com/suddenheartattacks  <<==

Live well,