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Primary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease With Statins
JS Schwartz - Circulation, 2011 - Am Heart Assoc In the current issue of Circulation, Lazar et al report the results of their modeling of the cost-effectiveness
of alternative statin treatment strategies for primary prevention using low-cost, lower-potency
generic statins. 1 Lazar's study informs clinical decisions and practice guidelines about ...
Patients and providers commonly express the desire to make medical decisions solely on the basis of anticipated clinical benefits, harms, and patient preferences and values, without considering the distorting effects of cost. With the widespread availability of generic forms of most US-licensed statins (as of November 2011, rosuvastatin will be the only Food and Drug Administration-approved patent-protected statin in the United States), the cost of statin therapy has dropped precipitously. All currently available generic statins, with the exception of simvastatin 80 mg, can be purchased for as little $0.11 to $0.13 a pill at 1 or more major national pharmacy chains.
At these acquisition costs, Lazar et al find that low/moderate potency statin therapy is cost saving for those without a prior cardiovascular event at a moderately high risk of experiencing a coronary heart disease (CHD) event (10% to 20% over 10 years; 2 Framingham Heart Study [FHS] risk factors and ...
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