Heart Attack – Medication After Stents

Transcript

Once you’ve undergone a cardiac cath and you’ve had a stent placed, you usually put on blood thinners to prevent acute occlusion of the stents. You’re usually put on aspirin and another antiplatelet agent. It’s very important for you to take both agents chronically and not to forget to take any of those pills cause it can cause an acute blockage of one of the stents in your heart. In terms of long-term therapy for prevention of heart attack, cause once you’ve had a heart attack, you’re always at risk for having another heart attack, treatment is aimed at reducing your risk factors for heart disease and that includes controlling your cholesterol. If you do have high high cholesterol and if you’ve had a heart attack, we usually want your cholesterol to be much lower than normal. So it’s not unusual to be started on what we call statin medications for uh, for your high cholesterol. Also controlling your blood pressure cause that’s another big risk factor for heart attack. So you may be put on multiple medications to ensure that your blood pressure is adequately controlled. If you have diabetes, your blood sugar will also be tightly regulated with medications and with Diet, and of course, we encourage increasing your physical activity, eating a heart healthy diet, and making regular follow-up appointments with your doctor.