Quick Reference to Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy PDF

Preface

This quick pocket reference serves as a guide for pharmacists and other healthcare professionals who provide care to patients with cardiovascular diseases, and will also be useful for pharmacy trainees (fellows, residents, and students) as a collection of important evidence-based guidelines and standard of care in pharmacological management of cardiovascular diseases.

Cardiovascular diseases have always been the number one killer of Americans. Treatment of cardiovascular disorders is one of the most highly evidencebased area of medicine and pharmacy practice. This book is written based on the most updated treatment guidelines and standard of practice of different cardiovascular disorders, as well as experience of our contributors, who are clinical pharmacy specialists in cardiology or practice in environments dealing mostly with patients with cardiac disorders.

This book is not intended to be a complete text. It is a collection of important treatment algorithms and other clinical pearls that are helpful to practitioners in their day-to-day practice. The quick reference begins with management of important cardiovascular risk factors: hypertension and hyperlipidemia. Following are important pharmacotherapeutics-oriented cardiovascular disorders: stable angina, acute coronary syndrome, acute and chronic heart failure, cardiogenic shock and heart transplantation, endocarditis, and arrhythmias. In addition, we have also added two chapters tackling other important pharmacotherapeutics problems related to managing patients with cardiovascular diseases: druginduced cardiovascular diseases and alternative pharmacotherapy used in managing cardiovascular diseases.

Perhaps the most efficient way to utilize this pocket guide is by either looking through the table of contents or by going through the index for the topic of interest. The contributors, based on their clinical experience, have incorporated information on most of the commonly encountered clinical problems in our practice. It is, however, important to realize that cardiovascular disease management is an area of constant change. Continuous research brings us new results and strategies for disease management. It is always important to keep up-to-date with the latest clinical trial results and incorporate those results into our practice appropriately.