Heart Medications
Dr. Christopher Nielsen: Well, Aspirin is by far the most common in the heart medication. I tell my patients that, an Aspirin a day keeps the doctor away, because it's probably the best medicine we have for preventing heart attacks, either preventing first heart attacks in people who are at risk of that and then preventing second heart attacks in people who've already had one. It also is good at preventing the strokes. So Aspirin is by far the most important medicine.
Then, I think next would be a medicine called Plavix or Clopidogrel which is another medicine that works similar to Aspirin. That inhibits the platelets which are part of the blood-clotting system. So it's a blood thinner that prevents blood clots from forming inside the arteries. It is helpful in people who have formed a blood clot inside the artery. Whether they've had a stent or whether they've not had a stent, it is helpful in certain patients.
The lipid or cholesterol lowering drugs, the specific ones called the Statins are probably the next most important type of medications. Those help lower the cholesterol and also are anti-inflammatory and help prevent people from building up more blockage or potentially can shrink some of the blockages they already have.
The other medications we use are beta-blockers. Those slow the heart rate and lower the blood pressure. Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, we shorten that to ACE Inhibitor. Those medications are blood pressure medications and they also probably have some other very specialized actions within the tissue.
Then there are calcium channel blockers and a whole host of other medications that we use occasionally, but those would be the major ones.
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