Avandia News

Avandia – A Fast Track to Death

-LawyersandSettlements

08/30/2008- Marina Del Ray, CA: Marla's mother, Vivian, died of heart failure less than a month after starting on Avandia. While Vivian was diabetic, Marla had no indication that her mother could suddenly die of heart failure. But now she wonders if Avandia played a role in her mother's death.

The terrifying thing about Vivian's death was how quickly it happened. Marla didn't live with her mother, but saw her frequently. The last time Marla came to see her mother, just before her death, she was shocked by how much weight her mother had gained. "She was really very heavy," Marla said. "A week Monday before my mother passed away she fell down. I was not with her, but a neighbour told me what happened. Basically, she couldn't get up because she weighed too much. So the neighbour called emergency services and my mother was taken to hospital. I went to stay with her when she got home. I noticed then that she had shortness of breath. And she was complaining of chest pains and pain in her arms.

It was frightening to me because it seemed to become much worse during the week before she died. And she had swelling of the extremities. I was with her the night before she died, and I remember quite clearly that her breathing was very laboured, all that day in fact, even though she was on oxygen. And she made a strange sound when she was breathing, that didn't seem right to me. The night before she died we both went to sleep – and she was breathing. When I got up the next morning, I saw that she was not breathing. We tried to resuscitate her, but she was gone."

The symptoms of weight gain, shortness of breath, and swelling of the extremities, that Marla witnessed in her mother, are not uncommon among people who have suffered heart attacks while on Avandia. "My mother had gained so much weight that it took two people to move her. She had never been that heavy before," Marla said. But Marla didn't know her mother was taking Avandia, and even if she had, she wasn't aware of any of the potential problems associated with the diabetes drug.

What is surprising is that Vivian was put on the drug in the first place. The cardiovascular safety concerns about Avandia have been widely publicized over the past year, and consequently have significantly impacted the number of prescriptions written for the drug. Perhaps the most alarming statistic to make the news is the 43 percent increased risk for myocardial infarction in people taking the drug. And, while edema – or swelling of the extremities¬– is cited on the labelling, shortness of breath is less well known.

While Marla did not have any real expectation that her mother's illness would improve, because diabetics rarely do, she didn't expect her to get progressively worse, so quickly. "She went downhill very fast, in my opinion," Marla said. "I would be interested in talking to a lawyer, if for no other reason than to determine why this drug was prescribed to my mother."