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Koonlawee Nademanee, MD; Bramah N. Singh, MD, DPhil, FRCP
UCLA School of Medicine Los Angeles

JAMA. 1982;248(12):1448-1449.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

We appreciate the opportunity of responding to Dr Alves and colleagues regarding adverse reactions during amiodarone therapy. The striking difference between their findings and ours merits clarification.

Amiodarone is a compound with unique electrophysiological and pharmacokinetic properties. Its side effects develop slowly and are a function of dose as well as duration of therapy; therefore, they will ultimately develop in every patient given a fixed dose (except the smallest). The fact that the drug elimination half-life is extremely variable (16 to 65 days) in different patients makes the correlation of dose with efficacy or side effects difficult, if not impossible, to determine if duration of therapy and, hence, drug accumulation are not taken into account.^1,2 For this reason, the variations in efficacy and side-effect profile of the drug among different investigators is understandable.

However, we are intrigued and surprised by the 57% incidence of chemical and clinical . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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