ABSTRACT
Magnesium is a drug that has been put to increasing therapeutic use recently. It is an important intracellular cation and is an important constituent of human body enzyme systems.
Therapeutic uses • Acute arrhythmias. It is the treatment of choice for torsade de pointes (a
type of ventricular tachycardia occasionally induced by class 1a or class 3 antiarrhythmic drugs). It is used to treat tachyarrhythmias, particularly those induced by digitalis, bupivacaine or adrenaline (i.e. iatrogenic). Magnesium causes widening of the QRS with a prolonged P-Q interval.
