October 27, 2016
What to Do When You Have Heart Disease is out of date…
Its been awhile since I updated this blog. About 5 years actually! Unfortunately, my book What to do When You Have Heart Disease is a bit outdated now. Since the book was published, medicines have changed, new diets have been discovered and heart disease treatment has progressed. All great things for you as the patient! It just means my book is no longer as helpful for our current patient population as it used to be. I considered writing a new edition but the first one wasn’t such a big hit at the bookstores. However, I could possibly be persuaded if there was enough interest. If you would like a second edition, please comment below. 🙂
December 20, 2011
Generic Lipitor is Finally Here! But is it Cheaper?
Image via CrunchBase
Many heart disease patients have waited years for the option of a cheaper Lipitor. Now that the generic is being sold in pharmacies throughout the country, is it really providing the benefit of being a lower-cost option?
With Lipitor being a widely prescribed drug for heart di
sease patients, the concept of a cheaper version has been a long time coming. Lipitor (atorvastatin) has avoided going generic for over 20 years by using big money to fund new studies and fight generic companies in court. Pfizer, Lipitor’s manufacturer promised that they were really going to let it go generic this year. It did indeed go generic just this past week!
News reports have stated that Lipitor’s sales have fallen by 50% just in this first week of generic availability. However, other reports (an article in the New England Journal of Medicine) have brought up concerns over Pfizer’s tactics to compete with the new generic. Deals have been struck between Pfizer and some large pharmacies to allow for Lipitor to be sold cheaper than it’s own generic!!
Currently there is only one generic available but after 6 months there will hopefully be more competition from other manufacturers. The more generic pills available to the public would mean lower prices for everyone! For now though, you may want to recheck the price of Lipitor at your pharmacy. Many people are just automatically filling their prescription for the generic without actually discovering the new price of Lipitor. While Pfizer’s tactics may be somewhat questionable, saving a few dollars in this tough economy is a top priority for many!
Related articles
- Generic Lipitor set to be Available in November! (keepyourhearthealthy.wordpress.com)
- New Lipitor generics: What you need to know (cbsnews.com)
Generic Lipitor is Finally Here! But is it Cheaper?
Many heart disease patients have waited years for the option of a cheaper Lipitor. Now that the generic is being sold in pharmacies throughout the country, is it really providing the benefit of being a lower-cost option?
With Lipitor being a widely prescribed drug for heart disease patients, the concept of a cheaper version has been a long time coming. Lipitor (atorvastatin) has avoided going generic for over 20 years by using big money to fund new studies and fight generic companies in court. Pfizer, Lipitor’s manufacturer promised that they were really going to let it go generic this year. It did indeed go generic just this past week!
News reports have stated that Lipitor’s sales have fallen by 50% just in this first week of generic availability. However, other reports (an article in the New England Journal of Medicine) have brought up concerns over Pfizer’s tactics to compete with the new generic. Deals have been struck between Pfizer and some large pharmacies to allow for Lipitor to be sold cheaper than it’s own generic!!
Currently there is only one generic available but after 6 months there will hopefully be more competition from other manufacturers. The more generic pills available to the public would mean lower prices for everyone! For now though, you may want to recheck the price of Lipitor at your pharmacy. Many people are just automatically filling their prescription for the generic without actually discovering the new price of Lipitor. While Pfizer’s tactics may be somewhat questionable, saving a few dollars in this tough economy is a top priority for many!
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October 1, 2011
Free Cholesterol Test, Blood Pressure Check and Diabetes Screening
Image via Wikipedia
In this tough economy Kroger hopes to attract more customers by offering Free Health Screenings at participating pharmacies. Heart disease patients know the importance of annual cholesterol checks but they can get quite costly for those without health insurance. This new Health Screening option can provide a little relief in the expense of maintaining a healthy heart.
Kroger grocery stores throughout the U.S. are advertising these free Health Screenings which include:
- Cholesterol Check (reportedly includes Total Cholesterol, LDL, Triglycerides and HDL)
- Blood Pressure Check
- Diabetes Screening
- Body Mass Index
A licensed pharmacist performs the tests and discusses the results with you. Most likely you will be given a copy of your test results so that you can bring them to your doctor for review. Heart disease patients experiencing financial stress can use this free screening as their annual cholesterol test. As long as you bring the results to your doctor and the numbers are at “heart disease goal,” there should be no need to obtain a second test. If there are changes made to your cholesterol medication, a second test will need to be done to verify the medicine is working.
People who want to take advantage of this opportunity need to make an appointment by calling the national Kroger number 1-877-444-9689. It is important to see a cardiologist at least once a year if you have heart disease so please do not use this as a substitute for your yearly heart check-up. Find more great tips about cutting costs and maintaining a healthy heart in the book What To Do When You Have Heart Disease.
August 7, 2011
Generic Lipitor set to be Available in November!
Image via Wikipedia
Lipitor’s 26-year reign over the statin brand-name market may soon come to an end when it’s generic equivalent starts selling in November.
Cardiologists and primary care physicians all throughout the country have long awaited a cheaper version of the “biggest selling drug of all time.” According to the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, Lipitor will be sold in a generic version by a company called Ranbaxy starting November 30, 2011. Lipitor’s manufacturer, Pfizer, has been able to put off the production of a generic by continually extending it’s patent for Lipitor. They found new indications for the drug which allowed for more and more patent extensions. Not to mention they have put plenty of money and effort in the legal battle over the rights to produce a generic. There is even some talk now about Pfizer legally trying to make Lipitor over-the-counter (highly unlikely!).
Lipitor, generic name atorvastatin, was originally used for treating high cholesterol. It inhibits a liver enzyme which usually signals production of more cholesterol for the body. Over time, it was found to prevent cardiovascular disease including heart attack and stroke. It is now also indicated for preventing heart attacks in people who already have heart disease. Regardless of cholesterol numbers, patients who have a heart attack will be placed on a statin like Lipitor as a means of preventing a second heart attack.
Other statin generics have been available for years now. Zocor’s generic (simvastatin) and Pravachol’s generic (pravastatin) have become very popular alternatives to Lipitor since they are much more affordable. Most physicians will tell you that these alternatives are just not as effective for reducing cholesterol compared to Lipitor or the just-as-expensive brand name Crestor. Clearly it is effectiveness that has kept Lipitor a top-selling drug in recent years. In this time of economic stress though, many uninsured people have had no choice but to make the switch to the cheaper statins. They simply cannot afford out-of-pocket Lipitor at $100 a month while simvastatin is only $15 a month and pravastatin is only $4 a month!
With this new generic Lipitor, atorvastatin could become just as cheap as the other generic statins. Hopefully it will still maintain it’s effectiveness as well. Ranbaxy will be the sole manufacturer of atorvastatin for the first 6 months which may mean continued higher pricing. Once other manufacturers join in on the competition, we should see a very affordable generic for Lipitor emerge!
May 23, 2011
Noninvasive Mitral Valve Repair May Not be Getting a Fair Shot
MitraClip Mitral Valve Repair System.
from the Abbott website
MedPage Today reported promising results in a study yesterday involving noninvasive mitral valve repair. Some clinicians feel the results could be much better if the patient population were different.
A new device called the MitraClip is getting significant publicity after initial results of the Everest II study were recently released. The MitraClip is a small prosthesis used to treat severe Mitral Regurgitation (a condition in which too much blood is going through the mitral valve in the wrong direction). This noninvasive repair process invloves implanting the clip onto the mitral valve of the heart by a simple needlestick in the groin.
The procedure is very similar to a heart catheterization for placing stents in which a wire is guided up through a blood vessel into the heart. According to the manufacturer’s website (Abbott), “The Guide Catheter is inserted into the femoral vein at the groin and provides access to the mitral valve. The Clip is used to grasp and fasten together the valve leaflets.” Once the clip is holding the mitral valve together in the middle, the valve is no longer able to allow so much blood to flow backwards. There is still plenty of flow forward around the clip.
The new study Everest II which is testing this device in up to 47 sites throughout the US and Canada has reported that “quality of life, and rates of re-hospitalization for heart failure improved significantly in the MitraClip-treated patients at one year” according to MedPage Today’s article. This was determined only after they compared “high-risk” surgical candidates. According to Bob Baeten, PA-C, at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, the new methodology for testing this device may be preventing it from getting better results. He states, “We’re testing this on the sickest of the sick rather than the patients who could recover easily from surgery. It’s the patients who get turned down for surgery that are tested with the MitraClip. These people are already very ill which is why they were turned down for surgery in the first place.”
It should be noted that the MitraClip has been approved and used commercially in Europe for 3 years now. The device is still seeking approval here in the U.S. The only way an American citizen can obtain this noninvasive mitral valve repair currently is by entering into a study at participating study locations.
For more information about heart catheterization procedures and recovering from heart surgery, check out the book What To Do When You Have Heart Disease at Amazon.com.
Related articles
- Clamp Device for Leaky Heart Valve Seems Effective (nlm.nih.gov)
May 5, 2011
Red Wine May Be Good For Your Heart but Is It Beneficial Inside Stents?
Image via Wikipedia
A new study is currently testing “red wine” stents in animals.
As far as eye-catching research goes, this one certainly has attracted some attention. A new study of lab rats showed that a component of red wine used during angioplasty reduced the chances of plaque buildup. Red wine has a high concentration of polyphenols which have been shown in past studies to reduce plaque buildup, thin the blood and promote positive vessel regrowth.
All of the good effects of red wine are hopefully going to be included in a new type of drug-eluting stent for humans in the near future. The rat studies have been promising thus far. Unlike other drug-eluting stents, the red wine polyphenols prevent re-blockage while also promoting healing. The ability to heal safely without blocking the vessel is key to making the red wine stents successful.
April 27, 2011
Pradaxa Now Covered by Medicare Part D!!
Image via Wikipedia
The new Coumadin alternative, Pradaxa, has recently become available on the Medicare Part D formulary. Medicare recipients finally have an affordable option to Coumadin.
The first Coumadin alternative for atrial fibrillation became available late last year and Medicare patients have been anxiously waiting for it’s inclusion in the Part D formulary ever since. With a hefty out-of-pocket cost at $250 a month, Pradaxa was much too expensive for most of the retired community.
Even though Pradaxa prevents more strokes than Coumadin, has no interactions with food (not even spinach) and requires NO monitoring (seriously, no more fingerstick checks!), many seniors could not rationalize paying $250 a month compared to Coumadin or warfarin which can cost as little as $4 per month. Now, 6 months after Pradaxa was approved by the FDA, Medicare Part D has multiple plans which will cover the cost of this expensive new drug. By searching the website www.medicare.gov, patients will be able to find Part D coverage and compare prices for individual plans. The monthly drug cost is still fairly expensive (from $30 to $50 a month) but this is still significantly less than out-of-pocket cost.
Patients who plan to switch to Pradaxa should confirm with their Part D provider that the drug is covered before trying to get the prescription filled. Here are some important tips to help make the switch:
- Your INR needs to be 2 or less before you can start Pradaxa
- You must take Pradaxa twice a day!
- You CAN take Pradaxa while also taking Plavix but only if your cardiologist feels it is safe in your situation
- Pradaxa starts working within 30 minutes to 2 hours
- Pradaxa is generally no longer effective if you miss 2 doses
- You cannot take Pradaxa if you are also taking Rifampin
- Pradaxa is not currently indicated for people with mechanical heart valves (although this may be coming within the next few years)
- The pills expire within 30 days of opening the bottle
- The most common side effect is heartburn (GI upset)
Related Articles
- Important New Information For Pradaxa Patients (keepyourhearthealthy.wordpress.com)
March 17, 2011
Stents or Bypass? New Study Says They Are Equal One Year Later
Image via Wikipedia
WebMD took a closer look at a new study comparing the benefits of stenting vs. bypass.
Well-informed patients with heart disease will certainly find this new WebMD article interesting. Patients who undergo Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) frequently ask the question, “Why did I have to get bypass instead of stents?” Alternately, people with stents frequently wonder how they dodged the bullet by avoiding bypass. Many more people may be dodging the bullet in the future thanks to this new study and the continual improvement in stenting procedures.
Several years ago, the decision for bypass was made whenever someone had more than 3 blocked arteries OR a significant blockage in the heart’s main artery (called the left main). In the study, a group of 1800 patients who traditionally might have all gone on to bypass surgery were split into 2 groups: approximately half went ahead with bypass while the other half underwent stenting instead. The results showed the 2 groups felt similar improvement after 1 year. In addition, the rate of heart attacks or death were about the same for both groups after one year.
There were some differences noted though when you look closely. People who got stents felt better much quicker and had a faster recovery than those who had bypass. On the other hand, people with stents were more likely to need another stenting procedure within the first year. Also, people who had daily or weekly chest pain prior to their procedure felt more relief of their chest pain with bypass surgery by 6 months out.
While this study may lead to more stents and fewer open heart surgeries, it won’t be making bypass extinct anytime soon. Many patients dread the idea of bypass surgery but if you have 3 or more blocked arteries AND you get chest pain at least once a week, bypass will still be highly recommended.
Read more about the study at WebMD’s article which is listed below:
Related Articles
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March 14, 2011
Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami and Radiation
photo from the Tokyo Metropolitan University website
The physical and emotional impact of Japan’s disastrous earthquake/tsunami will likely continue long after the clean-up.
photo from the Tokyo Metropolitan University website
With thousands dead and many more unaccounted for, it’s easy to see why last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan will be remembered for decades. With all the damage sustained, there are now fears that Japan’s nuclear power plants will release significant radiation into the surrounding areas. If the nuclear power plants go into “meltdown” the people will suffer serious health problems for many years. One of the well-known effects of radiation include heart disease.
Prayers and best wishes go out to Japan for a quick and easy recovery!
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