Till death us do part? Postoperative statin discontinuation

Authors

  • Andrew I Levin University of Stellenbosch, Tygerberg Academic Hospital

Keywords:

postoperative statin discontinuation

Abstract

With increasing frequency, anaesthesiologists are being presented with patients on chronic statin therapy or themselves prescribing statins to patients perioperatively. The reasons are twofold. Firstly, statin therapy is widely used for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular complications of atherosclerosis. Secondly, recent studies (supported by meta-analyses) provide relatively strong evidence that statins cost-effectively reduce the incidence of myocardial infarction after both non-cardiac and cardiac surgery. The available meta-analyses suggest that the risk reduction gained from perioperative statin therapy is clinically significant. Hindler and colleagues’ meta-analysis indicated that statin therapy was associated with 38% and 59% reductions in cardiac mortality after cardiac and vascular surgery respectively. Kapoor and colleagues estimated that statin users had a 30 to 42% lower postoperative incidence of cardiac death or acute coronary syndrome compared with patients in which no statin therapy was administered perioperatively.

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Published

2008-02-08

Issue

Section

Guest Editorial