| d hamilton 2007-01-10, 5:10 pm |
| After reading Wanderer's reply to an earlier post I did some Googling
and found the news article about cabergoline and the trouble it can
cause with heart valves.
I read several articles and they all said the same thing. Nothing
that made me feel terribly good but nothing that gave me numbers in
the easy-to-understand form I need.
It almost looks like I have a 30% chance of developing heart valve
problems with cabergoline.
One item I read suggested that at higher doses a person is 50 times
more likely to have problems ... 50 times more than what? At one time
I was taking 1.5 mg twice a week; the high-end dosage is recommended
at 1 mg twice a week (my current dose).
I would really like to hear "x out of 100,000 people will have
problems," which is how the value (for the other valve-problem-causing
drug) was expressed before the new study. (29,000 out 100,000? That
should have been caught sooner if it is the case.)
I know. A smart man would call his endo or GP.
My GP relocated to Florida at the end of December ... I can only
assume the thought of checking my prostate this month was more than
she could bear. I haven't had time to find a new doc yet.
My endo has been hospitalized for something and is out of the office
until next week. I suspected he was going to call me to cut my dose as
my last blood work came in better than before and that's the route
we've been taking ... I was surprised when he didn't call. I didn't
know he was laid up.
I'm not one to panic, but I am a bit alarmed and certainly
disappointed.
I don't recall what everybody's background is here but:
If you read anything else, will you please post about it? I'm sure my
endo would have mentioned the cabergoline side effects during my next
visit (we spoke about the fact there were no known side effects last
time). I don't always read the newspaper or Google news, but I do
read this group most days.
If anybody else has read similar articles, did you take something else
away from them that might be less alarming. Such as people with some
sort of preexisting heart problem were only affected. I didn't see it
and I have no reason to suspect as much ... but I think there are far
more knowledgeable people here than I. (I'm, naturally, looking for
the thing that would let me ignore the warning.)
Thanks in advance, I'm off to look up the symptoms of heart-valve
damage and just what it was that Fen Phen did to muck them up.
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