Many have questioned the new statin guidelines, which, if followed to the letter, would bring as many as 31 million additional Americans onto the medication.
Skeptics question big pharma’s influence and proponents see it as a way to save potentially millions of lives. The new guidelines take into account medical issues such as blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol levels and overall risk for heart disease.
The American Heart Association, which issued the guidelines, also created a risk calculator for physicians to use assess their patients. There was quite a bit of discussion inside Sermo about the new guidelines so we decided to ask our physicians how they would treat patients in light of the new rules.
There is dissent in the medical community about the guidelines. Our own Sermo physicians pointed out The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) can’t support the new guidelines, saying they are out of step with it’s “own recommendations.”
In a statement they were specifically critical of the risk calculator and said, “It is based upon outmoded data, does not model the totality of the US population, has not been validated, and therefore has only limited applicability.”
What we’re finding with our poll is that most physicians do as they have always done, take the new guidelines into consideration but treat on a patient by patient basis.
As a physician what do you think about the new statin guidelines? Will you be following them? Watching the literature to see what your peers are doing? Or even talking about with your peers right now inside Sermo, if you’re an M.D. or D.O. we’d love to have you join the conversation.
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