Introduction: The treatment of cardiovascular diseases is often complex, using more than one drug. Our goal was to evaluate how the different associations will influence the appearance of hyperkalemia. Material and methods: This was a retrospective study on 325 cardiovascular patients. During this trial we have evaluated demographic data, associated diseases, laboratory parameters and mainly the used treatment. Results: According to the demographic data 56% of the patients were males and 44% females. The most frequent diagnoses were hypertension and heart failure. We observed that when ACEIs were associated with spironolactone the occurrence of hyperkalemia was more frequent: 71% of the hyperkalemic patients received this kind of treatment. Conclusions: We observed that drug associations often cause adverse drug reactions – in our case hyperkalemia. The recognition of risk factors and drug interactions can lead to significant reduction of these events.
Keywords: hyperkalemia, pharmacotherapy, cardiovascular diseases