Kounis Syndrome Associated With the Use of Diclofenac

BACKGROUND: Diclofenac is a widely used analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic drug. In several case reports, its use was associated with the occurrence of Kounis syndrome. The aim of this review was to investigate and summarize published cases of Kounis syndrome suspected to be associated with the use of diclofenac. METHODS: Electronic searches were conducted in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and the Serbian Citation Index. RESULTS: Twenty publications describing the 20 patients who met inclusion criteria were included in the systematic review. Specified patient ages ranged from 34 to 81 years. Eighteen (90.0%) patients were male. Five patients (25.0%) reported a previous reaction to diclofenac. Reported time from the used dose of diclofenac to onset of the first reaction symptoms ranged from immediately to 5 hours. Diclofenac caused both type I and type II Kounis syndrome, with the presence of various cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, dermatologic, and respiratory signs and symptoms. Most patients experienced hypotension (n = 15 [75.0%]) and chest pain (n = 12 [60.0%]). The most frequently reported finding on electrocardiogram was ST-segment elevations (n = 17 [85.0%]). Coronary angiogram showed normal coronary vessels in 9 patients (45.0%), with some pathologic findings in 8 patients (40.0%). CONCLUSION: Clinicians should be aware that Kounis syndrome may be an adverse effect of diclofenac. Prompt recognition and withdrawal of the drug, with treatment of both allergic and cardiac symptoms simultaneously, is important

Risk factors for potential drug-drug interactions of statins in patients with acute coronary syndrome

The aim of our study was to assess risk factors for potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) of statins across different phases of treatment of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients: from the point of first medical contact to the coronary angiography (first phase), after coronary angiography to the last day of hospitalization (second phase) and at discharge from hospital (third phase). This was a post hoc analysis of the data collected during the retrospective observational cohort study conducted at the Clinic for Cardiology of the Clinical Centre Kragujevac, Serbia. Patients prescribed statins were identified from the original study population: 156, 240 and 236 patients for the first, second and third phases, respectively. At least one statin pDDI was present in 113 (72.4%), 161 (67.1%) and 139 (58.9%) patients in the first, second and third phases, respectively. Heart failure, arrhythmias after ACS, CRP, triglycerides, length of hospitalization, number of prescribed drugs, antiarrhythmic drugs, and clopidogrel seem to increase the risk of statin pDDIs in at least one treatment phase. Physicians should be vigilant to the possibility of statin pDDIs in ACS patients who have factors that may increase their rate

Drug–drug interactions in patients with acute coronary syndrome across phases of treatment

© 2018, Società Italiana di Medicina Interna. The objective of this study is to evaluate potential drug–drug interactions (pDDIs) and risk factors for pDDIs in three phases of an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) treatment: from the point of first medical contact to the coronary angiography (first phase), after coronary angiography to the last day of hospitalization (second phase), and at discharge from hospital (third phase). This retrospective observational cohort clinical study was conducted at the Clinic for Cardiology of the Clinical Centre Kragujevac, a public tertiary care hospital in Kragujevac, Serbia. Micromedex® interaction checker was used to detect pDDIs. This study included 245 ACS patients. All patients were exposed to at least one pDDI in all the phases of treatment. Mean total number of pDDIs was 9.47 ± 6.07, 10.11 ± 6.92, and 6.29 ± 3.66 in first, second, and third phases, respectively. Age, > 6 h from the beginning of the symptoms to admission, primary PCI, STE-ACS, COPD, delirium, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, obesity, systolic blood pressure at admission, TIMI risk score at admission, ALT, LDL, number of physicians who prescribed drugs to a single patient, number of prescribed drugs, and various pharmacological classes increased risk of pDDIs. Mechanical ventilation, dementia, and drug allergy noted in the medical documentation protected against them. Effects of heart failure, diabetes, and aPTT depended on phase of treatment and severity of pDDI. In conclusion, physicians should be vigilant to the possibility of pDDIs in patients harbouring factors that may increase their rate

Drug-Drug Interactions in Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients: Systematic Review

Abstract Drug-drug interaction (DDI) is defined as a clinically significant change in the exposure and/or response to a drug caused by co-administration of another drug which may result in a precipitation of an adverse event or alteration of its therapeutic effects. The aim of this systematic review was to provide an overview of DDIs that were actually observed or evaluated in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients with particular focus on DDIs with clinical relevance. Electronic searches of the literature were conducted in the following databases: MEDLINE, EBSCO, Scopus, Google Scholar and SCIndeks. A total of 117 articles were included in the review. This review showed that ACS patients can be exposed to a variety of DDIs with diverse outcomes which include decreased efficacy of antiplatelet drugs, thrombolytics or anticoagulants, increased risk of bleeding, rhabdomyolysis, hepatotoxicity, adverse effects on cardiovascular system (e.g. QT interval prolongation, arrhythmias, excessive bradycardia, severe hypotension), serotonin syndrome and drug-induced fever. Majority of the DDIs involved antiplatelet drugs (e.g. aspirin, clopidogrel and ticagrelor). Evidence of some of the reported DDIs is inconclusive as some of the studies have shown conflicting results. There is a need for additional post-marketing and population-based studies to evaluate the true effects of disease states and other factors on the clinical outcomes of DDIs. Clinicians should be attentive to the potential for DDIs and their associated harm in order to minimize or, if possible, avoid medication-related adverse events in ACS patients.</jats:p

Quantum phase for a system with an arbitrary discrete energy spectrum

Positive operator valued measures representing phase observables for systems with arbitrary discrete, possibly degenerate, spectra are constructed. The general construction is presented and discussed using illustrative examples. The phase POVM shows intricate discontinuous dependence on the eigenfrequencies. Special discussion is devoted to the systems with degenerate energy spectrum, in which case the phase observable is nonunique. We present arguments that can be used to reduces this nonuniqueness

Quantum phase for an arbitrary system with finite-dimensional Hilbert space

A representation of the phase observable in terms of a positive-operator-valued measure for an arbitrary quantum system with a finite Hilbert space is consistently defined. The phase for systems with rational relations between the energy eigenvalue differences is treated explicitly and the phase in the case of the irrational relations is obtained as a well-defined limit of the rational approximations

Dynamical time versus system time in quantum mechanics

Properties of an operator representing the dynamical time in the extended parameterization invariant formulation of quantum mechanics are studied. It is shown that this time operator is given by a positive operator measure analogously to the quantities that are known to represent various measurable time operators. The relation between the dynamical time of the extended formulation and the best known example of the system time operator, i.e., for the free one-dimensional particle, is obtained