Anita Creamer: Heart drug Digitek's recall is a dangerous murmur

Georgia Vonk didn't hesitate. When she got the call from the Target pharmacy in Lincoln that Bailey P. Vonk's heart medicine was being recalled, she contacted Bailey's doctor immediately.

And that's how Bailey – a much-loved, 4-year-old Neapolitan mastiff with a history of heart problems – came to be on the cutting edge of the nationwide Digitek recall mandated April 25 by the Food and Drug Administration.

"I thank God my dog's OK," says Vonk, the Sun City Lincoln Hills catering manager. "But I'm worried about the people who take this drug."

Digitek, a generic medication, has a long history as the country's leading treatment for congestive heart failure – in humans, of course, but it's useful with some pets as well.

While independent pharmacies don't necessarily rely on Digitek, it's widely used by mail-order medication businesses as well as large retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Costco.

The Class I recall – requiring patients to return their current Digitek supply to the drugstore – amounts to serious business.

"That means the recall goes down to the consumer level," says Tom Nelson, owner of Pucci's Leader Pharmacy in midtown Sacramento. "Quite often, recalls are at the pharmacist level, but we're not required to recall what's already been dispensed to patients."

So why is the Digitek recall, which affects millions across the country, so quiet?

It came about after a number of pills were found to be twice the dosage indicated on the prescription – as if during the manufacture, Nelson suggests, some batches resulted in every two pills being smooshed together into one.

Digitek is manufactured by Actavis Totowa and distributed by Mylan Pharmaceuticals and UDL Laboratories.

People who take the recalled pills may develop what amounts to digitalis poisoning, resulting in low blood pressure, nausea and vomiting.

And, in Bailey's case, severe gagging issues, reports Vonk.

Anyone who has accompanied a parent or grandparent to the doctor knows that some health care providers routinely brush aside seniors' medical complaints, as if they think old age automatically equates to ill health.

Frankly, it's not entirely clear to me how the elderly manage to endure the condescension.

So while Actavis Totowa says only 11 people have become sick and no one has died from what amounts to a Digitek overdose, imagine what it took for that relative handful of elderly folks to come to the attention of the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry.

"Consumers need to ask their pharmacists to talk to their doctor," says Cathi Lord of the California Pharmacists Association. "We want to help patients figure out what to do. They'll be OK once they contact their doctors. They won't have to go without medication."

What they're asking in online health chat rooms – and what Georgia Vonk is asking, too – is a bit different: Where were these pills manufactured?

"If this pill was made in China," says Vonk, "this situation will be worse than the tainted dog and cat food problem. Because this isn't a dog medication. It's a human medication."

True enough. But it's not appropriate to scapegoat China every time something goes wrong in life, despite China's recent history of poisoning our pets, contaminating our vitamins and tainting our children's toys.

Besides, according to the state pharmacists group, Digitek is manufactured in America.

So we have only ourselves, or at least Big Pharma, to blame.

The good news – as Brian Komoto, a Delano pharmacist and former California Pharmacists Association president, says – is that using the brand-name drug Lanoxin instead of the generic Digitek for a few weeks won't cost too much more.

The bad news, he says, is that some health insurers remain out of the loop on the recall news and will only cover the generic.

"Our patients are being pretty understanding," he says.

Maybe they understand that yelling at their pharmacist amounts to misdirected rage.

About the writer:

• Anita Creamer's column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in Scene. Call her, (916) 321-1136. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/creamer.