Post by gato on Sept 7, 2020 6:17:23 GMT -5
It's a medical condition caused by treating a medical condition. A patient is given a prescription for one ailment, only to be affected by the drug's side effects. So a second prescription is written to alleviate the effects of the first. Which leads to another set of symptoms, attached to the side effects of the second drug, leading to a third, and so on.
Since there is no such thing in the medical profession as a malady that remains nameless, this drug-domino effect is called a "prescribing cascade."
I myself, am a living example of this happenstance, but only in a small way: my daily maintenance dose of an asthma inhalant has the undesirable side effect of contributing to macular degeneration and cataracts. I take another drug to offset the MD ... about the cataracts I can do nothing but have the lens replacement down the road.
As we age (I assume some of y'all are aging as well) we find ourselves with those little Mon thru Sunday pill boxes, containing quite a number of pills and capsules. And not surprisingly, it is the aging population that is more affected by the prescribing cascade. In that regard, I am a lightweight so far. My wife, however, deals with Afib and high blood pressure, so she has a constant balancing act of adding or subtracting drug levels. Regular blood tests are part of the regimen.
Being of a certain age, a lot of folks figure the "doctor knows best," so they gulp down their prescriptions without a second thought. Personally, before swallowing a single dose, I always drill down on a drug's side effects and chemical competition with other drugs I'm already taking. I want to know if the cure is worse than the condition I'm being treated for.
Since there is no such thing in the medical profession as a malady that remains nameless, this drug-domino effect is called a "prescribing cascade."
I myself, am a living example of this happenstance, but only in a small way: my daily maintenance dose of an asthma inhalant has the undesirable side effect of contributing to macular degeneration and cataracts. I take another drug to offset the MD ... about the cataracts I can do nothing but have the lens replacement down the road.
As we age (I assume some of y'all are aging as well) we find ourselves with those little Mon thru Sunday pill boxes, containing quite a number of pills and capsules. And not surprisingly, it is the aging population that is more affected by the prescribing cascade. In that regard, I am a lightweight so far. My wife, however, deals with Afib and high blood pressure, so she has a constant balancing act of adding or subtracting drug levels. Regular blood tests are part of the regimen.
Being of a certain age, a lot of folks figure the "doctor knows best," so they gulp down their prescriptions without a second thought. Personally, before swallowing a single dose, I always drill down on a drug's side effects and chemical competition with other drugs I'm already taking. I want to know if the cure is worse than the condition I'm being treated for.
