Sending heart surgery patients home with a prescription for statin drugs, such as Lipitor  or Zocor, seems to increase the use of these cholesterol-lowering medications, according to a report in the medical journal Chest.

In the study, Dr. Ujjaini Khanderia, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues note that despite their benefits, statins are well documented as being underused. They therefore established a protocol to encourage statin drug use, beginning at the time people were sent home from the hospital after heart surgery.

Overall, the 201 patients in the protocol group were 60 percent more likely than a comparison group of 202 subjects to receive a statin drug at hospital discharge, the authors report. Follow-up at 6 months showed that those in the protocol group were slightly more likely than comparison subjects to be receiving a statin drug.

Among patients with high levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, those who participated in the protocol were more likely to achieve their target cholesterol level than were comparison subjects.

In a related editorial, Dr. John C. Alexander, from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, suggests that “a more active approach” to implementing cholesterol guidelines is needed to remedy statin drug underuse.

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SOURCE: Chest, February 2005.