Carvedilol

Manage my meds - for patients and carers
Scottish Government Effective Prescribing & Therapeutics Division
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What is Carvedilol?

  • Carvedilol blocks some nerve messages from being received by your heart and blood vessels. As a result, your heart beats more slowly and with less pressure.
  • This makes it easier for your heart to pump blood around your body.
  • This helps if you have high blood pressure or heart failure. It also helps to reduce chest pain if you have angina.
  • Carvedilol is one of a family of medicines called beta-blockers.

 

Find out more at: 

https://patient.info/medicine/carvedilol-tabletshttps://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/files/pil.3106.pdf

https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/files/pil.3106.pdf

How likely is Carvedilol to help me?

Key

  • This grey face represents the number of people in the survey group.
  • This green face represents the one person in the survey group that the medicine has helped.

Research studies have looked at how likely it is that Carvedilol will reduce risk of death due in people with advanced heart failure  that severely restricts their activities.

Research suggests:

In a group of 16 patients whose daily activities are severely restricted by heart failure, Carvedilol will prevent one person  from this group (on average) from dying over a period of one year.

This picture illustrates how likely it is that a person taking Carvedilol will  get this benefit.

1in16

It is not possible to tell what will happen to you as an individual.

 

Find out more about this research at: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11386263

(Tooltip - Mean age of patients in this study was 63 years. Current treatment included a diuretic and an ACE inhibitor  or Angiotensin Receptor Blocker. Carvedilol dose was 25 mg/day)

What are the possible risks of taking Carvedilol?

You can discuss with your health professional  the possible side effects and other risks Carvedilol might have.

Side-effects are unwanted affects that can happen to your body when taking a medicine. 

Not everyone will get side-effects. These usually improve as your body adjusts to the new medicine, but speak with your doctor or pharmacist if any of the following side-effects persist or worry you.

Here are some of the common side-effects of Carvedilol - which affect more   than 1 in 10 people:

  • Feeling dizzy, sleepy, tired or light-headed
  • Headache

There are other side-effects that are less common or rare. 

Find out more at: https://patient.info/medicine/carvedilol-tablets#nav-4