2896 Managing Heart Failure: The importance of getting your medication right

Hello. Once you have been diagnosed with heart failure, your doctor or cardiologist will start you on some tablets. This is because heart failure is predominantly managed with tablets, and this video will explain how we find the right mix of medication for you. If you have heart failure, your heart does not pump blood around your body as well as it used to. However, tablets can improve your symptoms, and help your heart to pump better over time. Your cardiologist and heart failure nurse will ask you to take a combination of tablets. The tablets that we prescribe are recommended by national and international panels of experts. You may take several different tablets and these may be different to someone else with heart failure, but they will be appropriate for you. We will explain which tablets you must take, and why you need them. The more tablets you can tolerate, the more your heart failure symptoms will improve. Whilst your cardiologist will prescribe some tablets initially, we need to find out if they are the right mix of medications for you. To do this, your heart failure nurse will monitor you in a number of ways and alter your prescription as necessary. This can take time and we won’t necessarily find the right combination immediately. We will monitor you in the following ways: Blood pressure, pulse checks and blood tests. These tests are done at your general practice, or in the hospital. Monitoring your symptoms and any side effects. The aim will be to get you on a regimen of tablets that suits you. We will listen to how you tolerate the tablets we give you and will ask you keep a diary of any changes in your symptoms, such as shortness of breath, coughing or leg swelling. Once we have found the right combination of tablets which suit you and your heart, you will need to keep taking them until we tell you to change them because your condition has altered. Once we have found the right tablets for you, we will ask your GP to take charge of your medication so that you can get your prescription from them as you would with any other tablets. You will meet your cardiologist when you are first diagnosed with heart failure and they will continue to see you in clinic every six months. Make a note of any questions that you want to ask them at these meetings. Whilst we are optimising your medication your primary point of contact will you be your heart failure nurse. Once your GP takes control of prescribing your tablets, they will become the first person you should contact if you develop side effects, or if your symptoms worsen. The British Heart Foundation website is also an excellent additional source of information.