I am a doctor. If I can sit down with a person for a half hour with their numbers I can explain things but to try to unburden a crowd of their many misconceptions simultaneously just ain’t possible.
My wife’s doctor just did what you said.
I have friends in the profession and I respect them. However, if more doctors could discuss alternatives other than pills/surgery, more people would be educated on the alternatives.
“I am a doctor. If I can sit down with a person for a half hour with their numbers I can explain things but to try to unburden a crowd of their many misconceptions simultaneously just ain’t possible.”
Yeah, I sold statins for years, and am quite familiar with all the statin CV outcome trials. There is just no question that statins reduce the risk of CV events. Now, there is the question of relative risk reduction vs absolute risk reduction.
Often, the absolute risk reduction over ~5 years is 1 or 2%. It may not sound like much, but with CV disease, we are too often talking about death as the first symptom. With some history of fatal heart attacks on my mother’s side, I’ll take any risk reduction I can get. I’ve been taking Crestor for several years now, and I have no side effects at all. I did have some pains on pravastatin. For those who have had issues with muscle aches on Lipitor or other statins, I’d recommend a trial on Crestor. The nice thing about Crestor is that it is effective at such low doses.
In Summary, for those who took the statin for 5 years:
Benefits in NNT
None were helped (life saved)
1 in 104 were helped (preventing heart attack)
1 in 154 were helped (preventing stroke)
1 in 100 were harmed (develop diabetes*)
1 in 10 were harmed (muscle damage)
www.thennt.com