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Take your medicines carefully
Taking your medicine every day is vital in the treatment of heart failure. You must make sure that you never run out of your tablets. You may need to take more than one tablet, and you’ll probably need to take your tablets every day for the rest of your life. You must keep taking your tablets until you are told to stop by your doctor or Nurse.
Do not take over-the-counter medications without checking with the pharmacist, your doctor or Nurse. Some of these may interfere with your prescribed tablets or affect your heart failure.
On the next few pages you’ll find short explanations of the medicines commonly used to treat heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. If you want any more information, please ask your Heart Failure Nurse. Please be aware that not every patient will be eligible for every medicine.
Some medications may be contraindicated because of another pre-existing medical condition and sometimes patients can
be allergic or intolerant of certain medicines. Depending on the outcome of your assessment it may be that you just don’t require a certain medication because you would not benefit from it. Your cardiologist and Heart Failure Nurse will carefully consider which medicines are right for you.
• Avoid Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory drugs including creams and gels i.e. Ibuprofen and Naproxen.
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