Doctors are supposed to do a ton of tests before even diagnosing ADHD. They are supposed to check your heart and liver functions before starting on medication and then monitor your heart and liver while your taking the meds to make sure everything is fine. They are also supposed to test you for thyroid problems and a whole list of other diseases/disorders to make sure you really have ADHD and not something since so many other problems have the same symptoms as ADHD.
Unfortunately most don't do any tests at all, they just ask a few questions then say your child has adhd and throw some meds at them. This is the main reason people get sick and hurt. It is also the reason that ADHD is so overly diagnosed in kids. It's so much easier for a lazy doctor to say ADHD then to actually do the work of ruling out all other possible problems.
PattyP - I'm so sorry for what you have been through and for the loss of your precious child. Thank you for the information. I know we all consider the potential side effects of the medications our children are prescribed. I think that we somehow need to get our doctors to check for impactive health problems as a standard procedure. This is especially important as so many of us are, ,at least at first, are uninformed. It typically isn't until after our kids start on the meds that we start looking closely.To everyone using Straterra. Please be careful. My son was 24 and had been diagnosed as a child with ADHD. We had tried many different drugs. Many seemed to work for a while, but nothing that made a great difference. He has been on Concerta for a couple of years but it didn't help with the impulsivity so we went to a psyc doctor who put him on Straterra. I believe it was 15 mg 2 times per day. He wanted to start with a low dosage. He recommended not to start that particualar day since by son had already taken the Concerta but to start the next day. I had inquired about side effects and was told of the loss of appetite, sexual problems, but nothing about racing heart or any heart problems. 10 days later my son was found dead on the living room floor. I had spoken to him before I left for work and he was fine. This happened sometime before noon that day. He did not seem to have any side effects that were noticable and was feeling very good about himself. The autopsy showed he did have a enlarged heart which we were not aware of. Toxicology test are being preformed but we do not have any results from that yet. Reading some of the posts here I saw where people were questioning why psyc. doctors don't check for heart problems before prescribing these drugs. I don't know if the medication had anything to do with my sons death, but suggest you be very careful before trying new drugs.