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[quitecontrary1]

My 16 year old daughter was diagnosed with a sinus tachycardia when she was 7, came on suddenly, fluttering in her chest, heart rate- unsustained but in the 170's. Sees a Pediatric Cardiologist yearly. Now she is not as tachycardic, still has fluttering and sometimes achiness.   Her echocardiogram is negative.  She currently takes Inderal LA 60 mg daily.  Her Pediatrician today prescribed Focalin XR 10 mg daily and as I was looking over the warnings, side effects on WebMD, it is listed as one of the drugs that someone with a tachycardia should not take, also mentioned that sudden death was a possibility- Yikes! Is there another safer med that she can take?  She's really struggling with school and is now at the point where I am homeschooling her.  She sits down to do her classes and can't focus, her chest flutters, she can't think.  She likes school.  Any recommendation for another drug with less severe side effects?

[grendslori]

Did the pediatrician prescribe the medication or did her pediatric cardiologist prescribe the drug. If the former did, call that cardiologist and tell him of your concerns. One of the drawbacks to knowing the side affect to drugs is that there are so many variables that are not discussed in the write outs. In this drug 10mg may be such a small dose, it won't do much of anything, let alone kill someone. Most people who are at risk for a SCD have severe heart disease and in those patients these warnings are important to know. Many children have heart flutters and attend school without difficulty. You should not have to be home schooling your daughter with that being the issue. If you are home schooling her due to her heart problems, then you REALLY need to speak to her pediatric cardiologist. Usually only children with severe forms of heart disease would be considered for home schooling; children with terminal heart disease that are so exhausted, it is hard for them to get around and you are talkibng about only 5% of children with heart disease. That 5% are children who need transplants. The teen years are so important for building relationships and when you keep a teen home due to heart problems you help them to become heart cripple and in the end, the friends disappear for fear of watching a friend die from heart disease, whether that teen will die from heart disease or not, it doesn't matter, the friends will see it that way because your daughte is too sick to be in school. In the long run, your daughter may start to lose her friends. You have to ask yourself if your daughter is really too sick to attend school and is there the possibility that she is playing on your worry and sympathy. No one can answer that for you, but you really need to ask yourself that question. I have gone through this with my own daughter and for that reason I know the outcome. Take care