Morphine for chest pain worsens death risk - study

	Tweet

High-risk Heart attack patients given morphine for their Chest pain have almost a 50 percent higher risk of dying, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

The morphine could be masking the symptoms of the most seriously ill patients and could itself be causing harm, the team at Duke University in North Carolina said.

Cardiologists should begin treatment with enough nitroglycerin to relieve pain before resorting to morphine, they advised.

"The results of this analysis raise serious concerns about the safety of the routine use of morphine in this group of heart patients,” said Duke cardiologist Dr. Trip Meine, who led the study.

“Since randomized clinical trials evaluating the safety or effectiveness of morphine for these patients have not been conducted, official guidelines for its use are based solely on expert conjecture,” Meine added in a statement.

Writing in the American Heart Journal, the researchers noted that both drugs have been used since before the days of modern medicine. Morphine was first used to relieve the Chest pain caused by heart attacks in 1912, while the use of nitroglycerin dates back more than 130 years.

Meine and colleagues looked at the records of 57,000 heart attack patients.

They looked specifically for patients with non-ST-segment elevation Myocardial Infarction or non-STEMI, a type of Heart attack that causes chest pain but not always other typical heart attack symptoms.

This type of heart attack sends an estimated 1.3 million Americans to the hospital every year.

Nearly 30 percent of the 57,000 patients were given morphine within the first day after being admitted to the hospital.

Those given morphine had a 6.8 percent death rate, compared to 3.8 percent for those given nitroglycerin.

“Nitroglycerin has a physiological effect that may, at least temporarily, influence the underlying ischemia,” Meine said.

“Morphine, on the other hand, doesn’t do anything about what is actually causing the pain. It just masks it, and may, in fact, make the underlying disease worse,” he added.

“Morphine has the well-known and potentially harmful side effects of depressing respiration, reducing blood pressure and slowing heart rate. These side effects could explain the worse outcomes in patients whose heart function has already been compromised by disease.”

RELATED STORIES:
Ultrasound procedure may quickly ease shoulder pain   Abbott Northwestern study shows non-drug techniques reduce pain in hospitalized patients   Antiviral Drugs May Help Relieve Nerve Pain Related to Shingles   Virtual reality eases pain in kids with burns   Student-Led Research Suggests Video Games Play Role in Pain Relief   Adherence to recommended exercise improves physical function, reduces pain for OA patients   Estrogen helps with endometriosis pain   Carpal tunnel screening not good for bottom line   Study Probes Obesity Link to Fibromyalgia   Pain disorders linked to patient’s perception   Demystifying Meditation – Brain Imaging Illustrates How Meditation Reduces Pain   Immune treatment helps chronic pain patients

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]