What You Can Do If You Are Diagnosed With Dressler's Syndrome

Dressler's syndrome often goes away after 3 weeks to 3 months, but there are a number of things individuals can do to accelerate their recovery. Here are five of the most important.

1. Don't take Indomethacin, the pain reliever marketed as Indocin, Indochron, Indocide, and Indomet.

Dressler's Syndrome causes inflammation and Indomethacin relieves it, but it also causes the breakdown of connective tissue in the heart that can trigger an even worse autoimmune reaction.

2. Ask your doctor about alternatives if you are offered corticosteroids for pain relief.

Corticosteroid drugs, such as Hydrocortisone, Prednisone, and prednisolone, definitely relieve the symptoms of Dressler's Syndrome. However, they can also raise blood pressure, cause fluid retention, and trigger rebound reactions when they are discontinued. Stopping steroids abruptly can leave you with worse symptoms than with which you began.

3. Ask your doctor questions if you are scheduled for injections of a blood thinner called Lovenox.

Lovenox, or low molecular weight heparin, is standard treatment for almost anyone in the hospital after a heart attack. However, if you have Dressler's syndrome, this blood thinner can cause bleeding into the pericardial sac that surrounds your heart, aggravating symptoms. It is even possible for Lovenox to cause a further complication of Dressler's syndrome known as cardiac tamponade, in which the heart cannot beat due to pressure within the pericardial sac.

The generic name name of Lovenox is enoxaparin sodium. It is also marketed under the trade names Clexane and Xaparin.

4. Be ready for a series of tests to determine whether you have blood clots in the lungs.

Doctors have a blood test that tells them when blood clots are not present in the lungs, the d-dimer test. Unfortunately, if you have Dressler's syndrome, the d-dimer test is likely to be ambiguous. In most hospitals, this means you will be subjected to a CAT scan to look for blood clots that may not be there. However, pulmonary embolism is a potentially deadly condition and it simply has to be ruled out--even if the test adds $5,000 to $10,000 to your bill.

5. Put off shots for flu and pneumonia.

Especially in the fall and winter, every heart attack patient is going to be offered immunizations for influenza and pneumonia. (The pneumonia shot is taken only once every five years.) If you have Dressler's syndrome, ask your doctor if you can wait. Immunizations are immune stimulants, and immune stimulation is the cause of symptoms in this syndrome.

Some people find Dressler's syndrome more debilitating and far more painful than the heart attack itself. The good news about Dressler's syndrome, however, is that it seldom results in fatality and almost always goes away, faster if it is treated properly.