Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
My mind is changing about statins. I'm growing increasingly worried about the irrational exuberance over these drugs, especially when used for prevention of heart disease that is yet to happen.
An elderly patient called my office last week to tell me thank you . . . not for a successful procedure or surgery, but rather for helping with a problem that had dogged her for a decade. How did an electrophysiologist help a patient without doing a procedure?
I stopped her statin.
A few weeks later, the patient said, her muscle and joint pain were gone. "I thought it was arthritis. I'm walking now. I haven't felt this good in years. I've even lost five pounds."
So why was this elderly patient on a statin?
It was being used to lower cholesterol in the hopes that it would lower the risk of a future heart attack or stroke. This is called primary prevention. The patient had no vascular disease but had a high cholesterol level.
The problem, of course, is that statins have not been well-studied in elderly women. Her doctor and the medical establishment writ large have extrapolated findings of clinical trials on younger, mostly male, patients to all patients with high cholesterol levels. This is a striking jump to make, given that low cholesterol levels in the elderly are associated with higher death rates.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/827675
(free registration required)
An elderly patient called my office last week to tell me thank you . . . not for a successful procedure or surgery, but rather for helping with a problem that had dogged her for a decade. How did an electrophysiologist help a patient without doing a procedure?
I stopped her statin.
A few weeks later, the patient said, her muscle and joint pain were gone. "I thought it was arthritis. I'm walking now. I haven't felt this good in years. I've even lost five pounds."
So why was this elderly patient on a statin?
It was being used to lower cholesterol in the hopes that it would lower the risk of a future heart attack or stroke. This is called primary prevention. The patient had no vascular disease but had a high cholesterol level.
The problem, of course, is that statins have not been well-studied in elderly women. Her doctor and the medical establishment writ large have extrapolated findings of clinical trials on younger, mostly male, patients to all patients with high cholesterol levels. This is a striking jump to make, given that low cholesterol levels in the elderly are associated with higher death rates.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/827675
(free registration required)
