Cardiac arrest in the setting of diet pill consumption

The obesity epidemic currently plaguing the United States has spurred the development of a vast number of drugs to assist in the battle against obesity and its associated complications. The need to loose weight often causes patients to loose sight of or even ignore the serious side effects of some of the most widely used weight-loss medications. Here we present the case of ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation arrest in an otherwise healthy 48-year-old woman who was taking no medications other than phentermine, a common appetite suppressant that functions as a central nervous system stimulant through activation of the noradrenergic pathway of the sympathetic nervous system.