Viagra® Can Save The Heart!

Filed in archive Treatment on July 12, 2007

The lives of people with specific heart problems (i.e. failing right ventricle) may be saved by the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra®.

Viagra® has been found by University of Alberta researchers to improve heart functions which led the team to encourage doctors to consider the drug when a patient has a failing right ventricle of the heart - a dire condition for which there is no treatment currently available.

According to Dr. Jayan Nagendran, a cardiac surgery resident at the U of A and the first author of the paper:

"There are a number of medical conditions in both children and adults for which there is a need to boost the performance of the right ventricle, and this drug can be clinically and immediately relevant to help these patients.

Sometimes the right ventricle can fail rapidly and even result in death, like in lung transplant surgery, for example. In such a case, Viagra may increase the right ventricle's performance and save the patient."

Their findings will appear in Circulation - a journal of the American Heart Association.

Find more details from the full report.