Digoxin is a medicine that can help people with certain heart issues. However, it's important to stay within normal digoxin levels when taking this drug. Find out what you need to know about digoxin levels and discover the pros, cons, risks, benefits, and how they may affect health.
There are numerous interactions with digoxin and digitalis glycosides, ranging from relatively minor (eg, cimetidine, triamterene) to life threatening. Many of the life threatening interactions occur as a result of elevated digoxin serum levels (eg, amiodarone, cyclosporine, macrolide and tetracycline antibiotics, propafenone, quinidine. Abstract The indications for measuring serum digoxin levels are suspicion of digitalis intoxication and the need to know the status of digitalization.
Pitfalls of interpretation include time of serum sample relative to time of last digitalis dose, age of patient, atrial arrhythmia, electrolyte disturbances, disease state of the patient, recent radioisotopes "on board," abnormal absorption or. Digoxin, the oldest known cardiovascular drug, is still used today to treat heart failure and atrial fibrillation. Because it has a narrow therapeutic index and multiple interactions, it frequently causes toxicity with a wide range of symptoms and cardiac arrhythmias.
More importantly, elevated serum digoxin levels have been linked to a higher risk of death in patients with heart failure or. Digoxin is widely prescribed for the treatment of congestive heart failure and various disturbances of cardiac rhythm. Digoxin improves the strength of myocardial contraction, and results in the beneficial effects of increased cardiac output, decreased heart size, decreased venous pressure, and decreased blood volume.
The serum digoxin level can be used as a guide to the appropriate dosing of medication and to monitor compliance, and can be used to assess toxicity. However, the relationship between digoxin toxicity and the serum digoxin level is complex. Clinical toxicity results from the interactions between digitalis, various electrolyte abnormalities, and their combined effect on the sodium.
Digitalis toxicity can be caused by high levels of digitalis in the body. A lower tolerance to the medicine can also cause digitalis toxicity. People with lower tolerance may have a normal level of digitalis in their blood and still have adverse effects.
People may also develop digitalis toxicity if they have other risk factors. People with heart failure who take digoxin are commonly given. In addition, drugs such as quinidine, verapamil, spironolactone, flecainide and amiodarone may increase serum digoxin levels, causing toxicity.
In addition, the guidelines also specify where digoxin use is inappropriate [4]. Due to its narrow therapeutic range, monitoring of serum or plasma digoxin levels is essential for patient management. We propose that an investigation of the serum digitalis concentration as a test for digitalis toxicity should (1) study patients with similar toxic manifestations, (2) obtain control concentrations.