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• SHREVEPORT JOURNAL
Problems of Drug Therapy Aired
At Pharmacology Seminar Here
Dr. Lester Soyka
By EVANGELINE TOLLESON
Journal Medical Writer
Medical doctors may have to ex-periment
for many years before op-timal
drug dosages are determined,
especially in the case of heart medi-cine,
according to Dr. Lester F.
Soyka, chairman of the department
of pharmacology at Vanderbilt Uni-versity.
Soyka was among five guest physi-cians
who discussed issues and an-swers
on current problems of drug
therapy at a pharmacology seminar
at LSU Medical Center here Friday.
Speaking about digoxin, a medica-tion
which for nearly 200 years has
helped heart patients to gain
stronger heartbeats, Soyka ex-plained
that for many years patients
have received more medication than
they needed during crucial moments
of heart failure. These overdoses
have often resulted in nausea and
other side effects.
"The idea used to be you have to
use a very large amount in a very
short time — to fill the body up (with
digoxin) — to get desirable effects,"
Soyka explained. Using statistical
data, he showed that infants and
adults do not need to have their
bodies "filled up" with the drug, but
show improvement with small doses
administered repeatedly.
With smaller doses, the patient
will get the desired effects within a
week, but will perhaps avoid many of
the side effects, he said.
Soyka said the misconception
evolved because blood samples
taken from persons who have re-ceived
the digoxin show a much
smaller saturation of the drug than
the amount "picked up" by the
heart. The doctor said the digoxin
content in the heart — where the
drug is needed — is 60 to 80 times as
much as what is registered in the
blood serum.
The "smaller dose" theory was
first developed in the 1920s, Soyka
said, but has only recently become
substantiated with statistical data.
Object Description
| Title | Problems of Drug Therapy Aired at Pharmacology Seminar Here |
| Creator |
Tolleson, Evangeline |
| Subject |
Soyka, Lester F. Conferences Drug Therapy |
| Notes | Photo of Dr. Lester Soyka |
| Publisher |
Shreveport Journal |
| Date | 1978-11-11 |
| Identifier | See reference URL on the navigation bar. |
| Source | Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport Medical Library (http://lib.sh.lsuhsc.edu) |
| Language | en |
| Relation | http://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/cdm4/index_LSUHSCS_NPC.php?CISOROOT=/LSUHSCS_NPC |
| Coverage-Spatial | Shreveport (Caddo, La.) |
| Rights | Physical rights are retained by Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport. Copyright is retained in accordance with U.S. copyright laws. |
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