Re: doctors overprescribe costly cholesterol-lowering drugs for minimal benefits
- From: "montygram" <nazztrader@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 12 Apr 2005 11:03:31 -0700
Old news. Read the book, Heart Failure, and you'll see what I mean.
TC wrote:
>
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/04/11/statins050411.html
>
> Improve cholesterol drug prescribing habits, medical team advises
> Last Updated Mon, 11 Apr 2005 22:07:11 EDT
> CBC News
> TORONTO - Current Canadian guidelines are leading doctors to
> overprescribe costly cholesterol-lowering drugs for minimal benefits,
> one group of researchers says.
>
> A high cholesterol level is one of the factors physicians use to
assess
> someone's risk of having a heart attack, along with age, smoking and
> blood pressure, among others.
>
> In 2003, Canadian doctors wrote more than 15 million prescriptions
for
> statins.
>
> In 2003, a special advisory group issued guidelines that recommended
> more people be considered at risk of dying from heart disease, and
> therefore treated with statins like Lipitor if changes in diet and
> exercise don't help.
>
> Now a group of researchers at Toronto's Institute for Clinical
> Evaluative Sciences, or ICES, say the guidelines should be revised.
The
> non-profit group uses population-based information to add knowledge
on
> a broad range of health-care issues.
>
> Dr. Douglas Manuel and his team contend the guidelines could see
> 500,000 more Canadians on medication, at a cost of millions of
dollars,
> while saving few lives in the long run.
>
> "If you're young and you're generally healthy, your risk of having a
> heart attack is going to be low no matter what your cholesterol level
> is," said Manuel, one of the authors of the study in Tuesday's issue
of
> the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
>
> The ICES team looked at Canadians aged 18 to 74 between 1988 and 1992
> who were considered at low risk for heart disease but who qualify for
> statin therapy under current guidelines. Their goal was to run a
> reality check, estimating how many such people would need to take the
> drugs to save one life.
>
> They concluded 19,600 people would have to take the medication for
five
> years to prevent a single death from heart disease. Potential
> side-effects of statins include muscle pain and liver problems.
>
> Statins already cost Canada's health-care system $1.6 billion per
year,
> according to IMS Health, a company that tracks prescription drug
sales.
>
>
> By tweaking the guidelines to treat everyone at high risk while
> de-emphasizing treatment for those at low risk, hundreds of millions
of
> dollars could be saved while potentially avoiding 1,000 more deaths
> from heart disease over five years, Manuel said.
>
> Current guidelines also fail to recommend statin treatment for 13 per
> cent of the highest risk Canadians, the team said.
>
> Cardiologist Dr. Jacques Genest of Montreal's Royal Victoria
Hospital,
> who helped write the cholesterol treatment guidelines, said there are
> flaws in the ICES study.
>
> "They based their assumption of cholesterol reduction on very old
> studies and not more recent data," said Genest, who is working on
> updating the guidelines to reflect research that suggests high-risk
> patients should be treated more aggressively.
>
> The study suggests people who are taking statins talk to their
doctors
> about what their real risk of heart attack is, and whether the drugs
> offer significant benefit in each case.
>
> They stress that statin therapy is appropriate for people at high
risk
> of heart attack, specifically those already diagnosed with heart
> disease.
>
> ******
>
> It is all a massive waste of money and peoples health to treat a
> non-issue like cholesterol with dangerous, expensive and ineffective
> drugs.
>
> A winfall for the pharmaceuticals that sponsored and engineered the
> establishment of these very low guidelines.
>
> TC
.
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