Heart surgery may become safer…

German scientists found out that people given cholesterol-fighting statin drugs before heart surgery are far less likely to suffer complications afterwards or die. This can be a relief to those who will have to go through this trial as well as to their near and dear ones.

The inspection of more than 31,000 patients gave to the researchers some of the strongest evidence of the benefits of statins before heart surgery. However their work also showed that too few doctors are prescribing cholesterol-fighting statin drugs.

"This is the first big summary of all the existing studies about people undergoing cardiac surgery," said Oliver Liakopoulos, a researcher at the University of Cologne. It was he, who led the study. "What our study underscores is the need to increase statin therapy," he also mentioned.

It’s worth mentioning that statins are the world's top-selling drugs and are believed to be highly effective at cutting the risk of heart attack and stroke. Consequently the medicines have also made fortunes for drug companies like Pfizer, which makes the market leader Lipitor, and AstraZeneca with its Crestor. However cheaper generic versions are now increasingly available.

The fact is that the odds of dying after heart surgery were 43 percent lower for people who had been on statins. It’s also evident that the drugs lowered the post-operative risk of irregular heartbeats by 33 percent and stroke by 26 percent. All this was confirmed by review of 19 studies made in recent time. Nevertheless only a little more than half of the 31,000 people in the studies got statins before surgery. Thus we can only conclude that more patients should receive cholesterol-fighting statin drugs.

But at present the researchers could not say what the right dose should be or how long patients should take statins, because people they studied were on the drugs from a few days to a few months which can make difference. "We can't say how much or how long is optimal but these are things that need to be looked at in further studies," Liakopoulos said.