she was prescribed 35 pills of prednisone (10mg) for her neck pain by her primary care doc. she was 62, smoked, and had high blood pressure and cholesterol. she was prescribed the pills on 6/10. three weeks later the same doc gave her celebrex 200mgs. two weeks after her celebrex was prescribed, she died from hypertensive cardiovascular disease.
i read the steroids are not good for your heart. i read that prednisone raises your blood pressure to high levels. this makes me think he was negligent in caring for my mother. anyone have any advice or experience with prednisone. thanks
Re: Prednisone (steroid) prescribed and my mom died
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiffrose
she was prescribed 35 pills of prednisone (10mg) for her neck pain by her primary care doc. she was 62, smoked, and had high blood pressure and cholesterol. she was prescribed the pills on 6/10. three weeks later the same doc gave her celebrex 200mgs. two weeks after her celebrex was prescribed, she died from hypertensive cardiovascular disease.
i read the steroids are not good for your heart. i read that prednisone raises your blood pressure to high levels. this makes me think he was negligent in caring for my mother. anyone have any advice or experience with prednisone. thanks
Last year I had an allergic reaction to a new BP med. At the ER I was given prednisone and clonidine because the ER doctor said the prednisone would cause my BP to rise. Rise it did to 246/120. But they kept me there till the clonidine brought it back down to 160/90.
They only gave me a steriod because they were afraid my throat might start swelling because the BP med was an ACEI.
Now I'm afraid to try ANY new meds.
Cass
Re: Prednisone (steroid) prescribed and my mom died
First of all, I'm very sorry for your loss.
Sounds like the prednisone she was given was the short burst treatment. You get a large initial dose and then taper off. I think this takes about a week, but I might be misremembering - its been a while since I took it that way.
Steroids are serious drugs, but sometimes they are necessary, and in some cases they can work wonders with pain or other ailments. When I did the short dose schedule, all my nasal and skin allergies went away. My runaway menstrual bleeding stopped. I felt wonderful. It all came back within a week or so of ending the drug. My brother has serious crohn's disease and longterm prednisone kept him alive for many years. On the other hand, he now has beginning cateracts, snapped an achillies tendon and has weight he can't get rid of.
I doubt the short term prednisone treatment of your mother caused high blood pressure that killed her. Hypertensive cardiovascular disease is something that takes years to develop. We all die of something eventually, and most of the time we don't know when that will happen. I'd be more suspicious of the Celebrex as a contributing factor, given the questions about COX-2 inhibitors.
Re: Prednisone (steroid) prescribed and my mom died
I DO know that prednisone causes huge amounts of edema, and edema is USUALLY tied to very high blood pressure.
I took it like mgraylorn as a short burst (for self diagnosed shingles) I caught it the first couple days and took the dose UP (to 40 mg/day) as I recall and then back DOWN and it cut the shingles attack to 3 weeks- good, from what I hear from others. I didn't bother to note any BP connection, because shingles is so very painful...I was distracted.
I took it after a complication from ear surgery or the antibiotic reactions afterward: as I recall it didn't do much FOR me but it DID fill me with water.
