(April 22, 2008) -- The American Heart Association is recommending that children undergo a heart exam before they're prescribed A-D-H-D drugs.
Stimulants like Ritalin that are used to treat hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorder can increase blood pressure and heart rate.
For kids with heart conditions, the drugs could make them more vulnerable to a heart attack and other problems.
"There's been concern that these drugs might be associated in a very small number of individuals' sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death," said Dr. Victoria Vetter of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, who led the panel that drafted the recommendations.
"There's no registry in the country to determine how many young people are dying from sudden cardiac arrest and what they might have causing that -- and similarly how many of those who die might be on these medications. So there's no causal information," Vetter added in a telephone interview.
"It won't pick up every one. There will be some false positives. But it's a relatively inexpensive and simple test that doesn't hurt the children in any way and it will let us identify some of these children and know that they have heart conditions," Vetter said.
"We particularly don't want to scare people or to alarm them," Vetter said.
The group also urged doctors to evaluate the heart health of children already taking ADHD medications if they were not evaluated before they began treatment. If the electrocardiogram turns up trouble, that does not necessarily mean the child should not get ADHD medications, Vetter said.
"We would monitor those children more carefully -- start them on lower doses of drugs and see how they do," she said.
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