DO NOT administer Nitroglycerine to a patient!!!

You can bring their prescription to them (either pills or a spray), and put it in their hands. But do not administer it to them.

Here's why: Since Nitroglycerine is a vasodilator, it makes the blood vessels get bigger, and the blood pressure drops. You have to have a good blood pressure to safely withstand that drop in blood pressure.

The patient should have been advised by their doctor what it feels like if their blood pressure is too low. You can't necessarily tell what their blood pressure is by looking at them. (Looking at me in these videos, what do you think my blood pressure is?

Remember, normal is around 120/80

My normal blood pressure is 104/70! Which is good and healthy. But if it dropped lower than that I could not safely use Nitro

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You may have heard us ask patients with chest pain if they have taken any of the ED drungs such as Viagra or Levitra in the past 24 hours. ("How rude, young man to ask such a thing!")

Those drugs work in the same way as Nitro in that they dialate the blood vessels.

So if they have it in their system AND take Nitro, it can cause an IRREVERSABLE bottoming out of blood pressure, and they could die.