These comments are made for the purpose of discussion and should NOT be used as recommendations for or against therapies or other treatments. An individual patient is always advised to consult their own physician.
Cardura & Vision
Question: My husband takes 4mg of Cardura per day for hypertension and an enlarged prostate. I recently read that one of the side effects is vision problems. I am interested in knowing what kind of vision problems. Since my husband recently had approximatley 1/2 of his retina burned away due to hypertensive retinopathy. Since he has lost part of his vision, I certainly don’t want him to take a medication that might risk further loss of vision(especially when there are many different medications available).
Answer:Cardura(doxazosin mesylate) belongs to a class of drugs called alpha-l inhibitor. This class of drugs was initially used in treating blood pressure problems due to its ability to block alpha-l receptors in the brain. It was found that patients had significant relief-in some cases from prostatic enlargement due to its side effect of affecting the sphincter muscle in the bladder. Commonly, this medicine is now used more for this problem than for blood pressure problems. It also can treat two separate problems which is nice. The most common problem taking this drug is postural hypotension;that is, ones blood pressure drops abruptly upon standing. Vision problems occure about 1-2 % of the time probably due to its central alpha blocker effect. I really haven’t seen this clinically and it should he reversible on stopping the drug.
