Heart failure medication - is this normal?

[PurpleSky300]

So, in essence – my uncle (60s) was diagnosed with left-sided heart failure 5 years ago and has been on lot of medications since, although he seems fits and well. He was diagnosed with diabetes at the same time but has never had any obvious symptoms or side effects, carries on all normal activities, seems fine. He was overweight but has lost 45lbs since diagnosis through diet and exercise and is at a normal weight.

In recent months though, he’s had a lot of irregular blood tests. GP seems to be changing his medications monthly or bi-monthly to control blood pressure, cholesterol etc and I don’t think he fully understands what’s going on anymore. I get the impression that he turns up at appointments and nods along but doesn’t take much in.

I don’t know enough about the medications to help either. His current meds list is:

• Edoxaban
• Digoxin
• Amlodipine
• Losartan
• Metformin
• Bisoprolol
• Atorvastatin
• Spironolactone
• Febuxostat

I guess what I’m getting at is – is this quite ‘standard’ for heart failure? Is it an excessive amount of meds? What should we be asking to try and get some clarity?

Does he have AF too? (Just because of the digoxin and the anticoagulant)

Without getting into it all that is a standard amount of medication.
it’s very common for medication for diabetes and heart to need to testing - some times it can be altered weekly if they are unstable- so I can understand your uncle may be feeling a bit bamboozled with it all but it sounds as though he isn’t as stable as you
might think if meds need altering frequently.

pharmacist is probably your best bet to have a chat too to understand his meds.
might be worth asking if there are heart failure nurses in uncles area and whether he would benefit from one too. Hth

Yeah. He has a pacemaker and an internal auto-defibrillator. (ICD).

Yeah, I think it is hard to know how stable he is. He's not that keen to know - very much an "I feel fine so I must be fine" person and he doesn't deal with negative information, just filters it out. It's just recently I have started to think that there must be something not quite right because he must have had 6 blood tests in the last few months.

Is he prone to attacks of gout? I'm wondering about the febuxostat, and whether he might have been withdrawn from another blood-pressure medication (e.g. indapamide) without having the febuxostat withdrawn at the same time. Anyway, he would probably benefit from talking to a pharmacist, and taking someone with him to take notes.

My mother had heart failure. It was a constant battle to get her medication balenced due to side effects and interactions.
It sounds like his GP is monitoring and he feels well so I wouldn't be concerned.