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Digitalis is a long-standing treatment for chronic heart failure. Although studies documented worsening of heart failure upon abrupt discontinuation of digoxin (the most common form of digitalis), the large, randomized, placebo-controlled DIG trial showed that digoxin did not reduce 3-year all-cause mortality, even though it modestly reduced hospitalization for worsening heart failure (N Engl J Med 1997; 336:525).
The present researchers recently revisited the DIG data and found that female digoxin recipients had a significantly higher multivariate-adjusted all-cause mortality risk than female placebo recipients (Journal Watch Cardiology Dec 20 2002). Now, these researchers have analyzed the relation between serum digoxin concentration (SDC)…