Objective To estimate the average postponement of death in statin trials.
Setting A systematic literature review of all statin trials that presented all-cause survival curves for treated and untreated.
Intervention Statin treatment compared to placebo.
Primary outcome measures The average postponement of death as represented by the area between the survival curves.
Results 6 studies for primary prevention and 5 for secondary prevention with a follow-up between 2.0 and 6.1 years were identified. Death was postponed between −5 and 19 days in primary prevention trials and between −10 and 27 days in secondary prevention trials. The median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.
Conclusions Statin treatment results in a surprisingly small average gain in overall survival within the trials’ running time. For patients whose life expectancy is limited or who have adverse effects of treatment, withholding statin therapy should be considered.
Setting A systematic literature review of all statin trials that presented all-cause survival curves for treated and untreated.
Intervention Statin treatment compared to placebo.
Primary outcome measures The average postponement of death as represented by the area between the survival curves.
Results 6 studies for primary prevention and 5 for secondary prevention with a follow-up between 2.0 and 6.1 years were identified. Death was postponed between −5 and 19 days in primary prevention trials and between −10 and 27 days in secondary prevention trials. The median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.
Conclusions Statin treatment results in a surprisingly small average gain in overall survival within the trials’ running time. For patients whose life expectancy is limited or who have adverse effects of treatment, withholding statin therapy should be considered.
Full text here: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/
Graham
3 comments:
What a fascinating blog! I’m so pleased you visited me and gave me the chance to connect with you. My doctor put me on statins, but I read lots of negative things about them and stopped the treatment. He didn’t prescribe them because of need just as a preventative method. Having read these statistics I think I made the right decision.
Thank you a lot! I just used the material in my discussion about statines in a FB group. A doctor, after reading the post about statines complications cried in a despair "but what to use in the place of statines?!" She couldn't imagine modern medicine without such drugs.
Oh my that doesn't make much of a difference does it
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