Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Treatments and drugs
By Mayo Clinic staffIn many cases, the swelling that causes myocarditis improves, either on its own or with treatment, leading to a complete recovery. Treatment of myocarditis focuses on the underlying cause, such as the particular infection that may have caused your heart inflammation.
There's no specific treatment for coxsackievirus B — the most common type of virus that causes myocarditis — other than treatment to relieve pain and other symptoms.
Treating mild cases
In mild cases, your doctor may tell you to rest and prescribe medications to help your body fight off the infection causing myocarditis while your heart recovers. If bacteria are causing the infection, your doctor will prescribe antibiotics. Certain rare types of viral myocarditis, such as giant cell and eosinophilic myocarditis, respond to corticosteroids or other medications to suppress the immune system. In some cases caused by chronic illnesses, such as lupus, the treatment is directed at the underlying disease.
Once your heart inflammation has improved, you can gradually resume a more active lifestyle. In the meantime, your doctor may recommend that you limit the amount of salt in your diet, and avoid alcohol, cigarettes and vigorous exercise. Taking these steps can reduce the workload on your heart.
Drugs to help your heart
If you have rapid or irregular heartbeats as a symptom, your doctor may hospitalize you. You'll receive drugs to regulate your heartbeat. If your heart is weak, your doctor may prescribe medications to strengthen its pumping ability, reduce your heart's workload or help you eliminate excess fluid. These medications may include:
- Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, such as enalapril (Vasotec), captopril (Capoten), lisinopril (Zestril, Prinivil) and ramipril (Altace), which relax the blood vessels in your heart and help blood flow more easily
- Beta blockers such as metoprolol (Toprol-XL) and carvedilol (Coreg), which work in multiple ways to treat heart failure and help control irregular or fast heart rhythms
- Diuretics, such as furosemide (Lasix), which relieve sodium and fluid retention
- Digoxin (Digitek, Lanoxin), which increases the strength of your heart muscle contractions and tends to slow the heartbeat
Treating severe cases
In some severe cases of myocarditis, aggressive treatment may be necessary, such as:
- Intravenous (IV) medications to improve the heart-pumping function
- Placement of a pump in the aorta (intra-aortic balloon pump)
- Use of a temporary artificial heart (assist device)
- Consideration of urgent heart transplantation
Some people may have chronic and irreversible damage to the heart muscle requiring lifelong medications, while other people need medications for just a few months and then recover completely. This variability in the disease makes it difficult for your doctor to predict how you'll do.
