Flecainide is the generic name for a medicine marketed in the United States as Tambocor. It's an antiarrhythmic medication used to regulate how your heart beats. Flecainide may be prescribed as a pill or capsule to correct an irregular heartbeat. This can include a rapid heart rate called tachycardia, a slowed heart rate called bradycardia or an irregular heartbeat known as arrhythmia.
Visual Side Effects
Because flecainide helps to decrease the rate of nerve impulses inside your heart, it can produce some adverse side effects elsewhere in your body. This occurs because your heart affects all of your body systems. The most common of these types of side effects are making it very difficult for you to focus your eyes, giving you blurry vision. The drug also may cause you to see spots floating in your vision, RxList.com reports. The Mayo Clinic notes these visual problems should be temporary only when you begin to use flecainide. They are not categorized as serious problems, but explain them to your physician if they continue after the first few days or a week of beginning treatment.
Abdominal Side Effects
Taking flecainide also can cause various common but non-serious side effects in your abdomen. It can, for example, cause your intestines to remove too much fluid from your food while digestion occurs. This can result in harder than normal stools that are more difficult to pass out of your body. This is called constipation. Flecainide also may make you feel sick to your stomach or nauseous when you begin taking it. As your body gets used to the medicine, this feeling should fade, too. You may feel other discomfort in your stomach as well, such as cramps or indigestion.
Bodily Side Effects
Flecainide has been reported to produce other common side effects that are not serious in other parts of your body or your body as a whole. For example, it can make you feel dizzy and faint. Because the medication makes your heart beat differently than you are accustomed to, you may feel an overall bodily weakness or fatigue. It also may make you feel unsteady, particularly when walking. Headaches also may occur from flecainide when you start using it.
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