Welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast.

On today's episode, I'm going to cover calcium channel blockers and more specifically the

dihydropyridines.

Common examples of dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers include amelotepine,

which is brand name Norvask,

philotapine, brand name plendil, nipetopine, brand name nifetacal.

Mechanism of action with calcium channel blockers is, as it sounds.

They block calcium channels, which basically leads to relaxation of smooth muscle and vasodilation, therefore lowering blood pressure.

Most common use that I see these medications use for is hypertension or high blood pressure.

Adverse effects?

Most common adverse effect you're likely going to see is dizziness, lower blood pressure,

as well as the potential for edema, peripheral edema. So swelling in the ankles, swelling in the lower

limbs is something that can definitely happen and does happen in clinical practice. This is a dose

dependent effect. So basically what that means is the higher the dose, the more likely you're going to run into this adverse effect. So basically what that means is the higher the dose, the more likely you're going to run

into this adverse effect. In clinical practice, what I've seen numerous times, especially in

patients on numerous medications, where this might slip through the cracks, is in order LISIX soon after starting and or increasing a calcium channel blocker like amylopine.

So again, look out for those medications that get rid of fluid and help treat edema.

Be sure we're looking at our medication list prior to adding any type of

diuretic or water pill. So I mentioned these are dihydropyridines. There is a class of calcium

channel blockers called non-dihydropyrodines, and they act more so on the heart, which I will

talk about in another episode for sure. But just remember that amylotapine, philotapine,

phallotapine, these medications aren't going to act on the heart. So what that means is we don't need to monitor pulse rate typically with these meds.

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