What Is Flecainide And What You Need To Know?

To prevent and deal with high heart rates, the doctors preferred to use flecainide which is medication. It comprises ventricular and supraventricular tachycardias. This drug is only selected when some acute symptoms cannot be handled through treatments, and the patients are suffering from dangerous arrhythmias.

Summary show

Significant Warning Related To Flecainide

Flecainide as a drug, some of the essential warnings are associated with heart rates and rhythms. Some are given as below:

Abnormal risk of heart rhythm:

The risk of irregular heart rhythms is at the peak if you are taking flecainide. According to the condition, this medication is given by the doctor in the hospital to monitor the heart rhythms closely.

Warning of heart failure:

Worsen heart failure can also be caused by flecainide. If you have heart failure, the doctor can also keep a close check over the level of drugs consumed by your body.

What Do You Know About Flecainide?

Flecainide oral tablet is a prescription drug that is available to the heart patient as a generic drug. As a generic drug, the cost is relatively more minor. They may not be available in all forms as a brand. If the generic drug is required for you, then consult with the healthcare provider that if this will work for your condition or not.

Why Is Flecainide Used?

The oral tablet is used to deal with medical conditions such as paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT), paroxysmal atrial fibrillation or flutter (PAF), and ventricular arrhythmias. When the heart rate gets abnormal in the heart’s upper chambers, then the condition is known as Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation. It can cause pain in the chest, lightheadedness, and shortness of breathing.

Secondly, ventricular arrhythmias are when the heart rate gets abnormal in the heart’s lower chambers. The drug is only given to the person if the doctor thinks that the state becomes worse and can cause a threat to life.

Supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) is a condition when a temporary increase in the heart rate starts in the parts of your heart above the ventricles. The symptoms of this condition are shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, and feeling the beat of your heart. Flecainide can be used as an integral element of combination therapy. It means that the patient can take it with other drugs.

The Working Of Flecainide

The oral tablet belongs to a category of drugs called antiarrhythmics. This category of drugs works similarly for most medical conditions. A similar chemical structure is followed and used to deal with a similar type of treatment. Flecainide works to minimize the electrical signal in your heart and helps to make the heart rhythm regular.

Side Effects Of Flecainide

Drowsiness is not caused by Flecainide oral tablet, but it has some other side effects. Mild side effects can go away within a few days and a week too. However, some additional side effects cannot go away; consult with the doctor or pharmacist.

Common Side Effects

Some of the common side effects that happen with flecainide involve:

Stomach problems: constipation, stomach pain, and nausea.
Vision problems: blurred vision and spots in the vision field.
Low blood pressure: dizziness, lightheadedness, and feeling faint as well as weak.
Parts of the body shaking such as hands, arms, head, and legs.
Headache.

Serious Side Effects

You need to consult your doctor if you are facing any severe side effects after taking flecainide. Some of them are listed below, and these are sometimes life-threatening.

Heart failure: It includes fluid in your arms, legs, hands, and feet, as well as unnecessary weight gain.
Abnormal heart rate: Fluttering, slow heart rate, fast heart rate, chest pain, and shortness of breathing.
Liver problems: Skin yellowing, loss of appetite, and weakness.
Stomach problems: abdominal pain and nausea.
Bleeding issues: coughing up blood and unexplained bleeding or bleeding and bruising for a long time.
Allergic reactions: wheezing, chest tightness, itching, and swelling of face, lips, throat, and tongue.
Flu-like symptoms: fever, chills, headache, pains in joints and muscles, and tiredness.

Interaction With Medicines

If you take flecainide, you will also get vitamins and herbs when the substance changes the way a drug works, which is a better interaction. These are sometimes harmful and also protect from working reasonably.

To assist in helping the interactions, all your medications should also manage carefully by the doctor. Make sure that you inform all about the medicines, vitamins and other herbs too. Here are examples of some of the drugs that cause interactions with the flecainide that are listed below.

Digoxin: The level of digoxin increases due to the consumption of flecainide in the body. But you ought to have an increased risk of side effects.
Heart and blood pressure drugs: Some beta-blockers such as propranolol (Inderal LA) maximize the level of both medicines in the body. Still, it does not increase the risk of side effects from any of these medications. Calcium channel blockers like nifedipine and diltiazem are not allowed to take all these with flecainide as the results are still unknown.
Drugs for seizures: Drugs such as phenytoin, Phenobarbital, and carbamazepine may decrease the level of flecainide in the body. With these drugs, flecainide will not work correctly.
Quinidine: With this drug, flecainide levels increase in the body and may hike the risk of side effects.
Disopyramide: Through consuming this drug, flecainide is not recommended and may slow down the heart rhythm.
Amiodarone: When using this drug, it provides you half of your Flecainide average dose and handles the side effects.

Warnings Related To Flecainide

Several warnings are attached to the flecainide. In addition to this, some of the side effects are mentioned below:

Allergy Warnings: Various allergic reactions can cause by flecainide, and symptoms are trouble breathing, swelling of the throat or tongue, and hives.
Alcoholic Interactions: Alcohol and other drugs are processed in similar ways. This drug may not take long to leave the body if you drink alcohol.

How To Take Flecainide?

The information about the doses of the Flecainide oral tablet is available here. It includes all types of best possible dosages as well as forms. But what quantities, paper and frequently on what factors it depends on such as:

Your age group.
The condition you treat.
How difficult the situation is.
Other associated medical conditions.
How to react.

What Are The Forms And Strengths?

Generically, it is known as flecainide which is a generic drug and black box origin. It is a form of oral tablet, and the strengths are 50 mg, 100 mg, and 150 mg.

Medicine Doses For The Prevention Of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation Or Flutter

To deal with the medical condition of paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation of flutter, different doses of medications are taken based on age groups which are as follow:

Adult Dosage between the ages of 18-64 years: Every twelve months, the starting doses are 50 mg. the doctor can increase the amounts of medicines by 50 mg and consume twice per day until the effective drugs.
Child Dosage between the ages of 0-17 years): People eighteen years of age, the Flecainide oral tablet has not been established yet in terms of safety and effectiveness.
Senior Dosages between the ages of 65 years: The process of this drug may take some time to absorb in the body. It can be toxic to consume more of this drug.

Vital Considerations About The Flecainide

You need to keep all the related considerations in your mind if your doctor prescribes the oral tablet of flecainide for you. Here are some of them as mentioned below:

General: There are some instructions attached to the medications, such as not cutting the tablet, and not every pharmacy has this drug.
Storage: Keep the medicine at a definite temperature between 20 to 25-degree Celsius, and do not freeze the mixture. Stay away from the light as well as high temperatures.
Refills: This medicine is refillable, and the doctor will write the number of refills.

Underlying Things About Flecainide

Here are some things that are pretty important and every person should have to aware of all these things related to flecainide. So, let us have a look at these first.

This oral tablet is only available as a generic drug.
The doses of these drugs depend on the age and the treatment for which you need the tablet. A doctor can decide better what doses are best for your condition.
This is an oral drug that can be used to protect a person from various types of rhythms related to the heart, such as paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT), paroxysmal atrial fibrillation or flutter (PAF), and ventricular arrhythmias.

Important Warning Regarding Flecainid By Food And Drug Administration

The drug is quite severe for the health of any person. So, the FDA provides some important warnings related to a heart attack and an unstable heart rate. Let us take these warnings into the limelight.

A black box warning is given on this drug, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The potentially dangerous effects of this oral tablet are alerted to doctors and patients via this black box warning.
In the past two years, if you had any heart attack, then the consumption of flecainide may increase the risk of a heart attack, which will be a fatal one.
Inform your doctor if you have any atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter. In such medical issues, your heart does not beat accurately and increases the chances of risk for growing the definite kinds of irregular heartbeats. If you have chronic atrial fibrillation, it is highly not recommended to take the dos of flecainide.

Final Thought

After all, such vital aspects of flecainide should be kept in mind to deal with the different medical conditions. But you ought to consider the signs as well as symptoms and their impact on the body. There are some other alternatives to this Flecainide oral tablet, but for this, you need to talk and consult with your doctor.