Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, Eric Christensen.

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The medication of the day today is Carvatalol.

Brand name of this medication is Coreg.

And I would say I do see this medication used fairly frequently.

It is classified as a beta blocker. So naturally, you may see it used for things like

blood pressure, heart failure, angina, atrophibulation, post-MI, those are all kind of common

indications. So interestingly, over the last few years, at least when I started

in practice, I definitely saw this medication used more and more just for straight hypertension.

Recent guidelines over the last few years, ACCHA does not recommend beta blockers, typically as a first-line agent for blood pressure if there's no compelling indication or another reason to use a beta blocker.

So that's definitely been a change over the last five to ten years, at least from what I've seen.

So those compelling indications I kind of alluded to and the one that I see

it used most often in is heart failure. So heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

Dosing of the medication, 3.125 milligrams twice a day, titrate up to 25 milligrams twice a day.

Again, that's going to be based upon tolerability.

So we're going to check out that heart rate, check out blood pressure, make sure we aren't getting too low with those.

Ultimately, in a situation specifically with reduced dejection fraction heart failure,

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