Posted on 03/10/2005 7:35:30 PM PST by neverdem
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ORLANDO, Fla., March 9 (AP) - Adding Plavix to other anticlotting drugs typically given to heart attack patients saves lives and prevents second heart attacks, two international studies have found.
The strategy, specialists said, is the first big advance in care after heart attacks in more than 10 years, since the efficacy of modern clot-busters was shown. The low-cost and simple treatment of using Plavix will have major effects in community hospitals, where most Americans obtain care, the scientists said.
It could also help in poorer countries, where heart surgery and the opening of blocked arteries are not common.
Two weeks of Plavix pills cost $50 to $100 a patient.
"It really is a great day for heart attack patients," a researcher, Dr. Christopher P. Cannon of the Harvard Medical School, said.
Plavix is used to prevent clotting. Its safety and effectiveness in treating major heart attacks had not been tested. The two studies were paid for by the sellers of Plavix, Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Many of the researchers have consulted for the two companies.
The results of the studies were presented here at a conference of the American College of Cardiology. One study was published online by The New England Journal of Medicine and will be in its March 24 print edition.
The studies looked at heart attacks caused by large clots that fully or almost completely blocked major arteries, the type that account for about a third of the 865,000 heart attacks each year in the United States and the 10 million worldwide.
Those patients can be treated with emergency procedures to open arteries or with medications to dissolve clots until the patients can have an angiogram to determine the need for surgery or angioplasty. Arteries reclose about one-fourth of the time in medicated people, doubling their risk of dying before a procedure.
One study, with 46,000 Chinese, found that the risk of death, stroke or another heart attack was 9 percent lower in patients given Plavix along with standard anticlotting drugs like aspirin, heparin and the clot breakers TPA or streptokinase than in patients given just the standard drugs. The risks of bleeding and other serious side effects were no different.
The other study was led by Dr. Marc S. Sabatine of Harvard and the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and involved 3,491 heart attack patients in Europe given standard drugs with or without Plavix.
The risk of death, another heart attack or artery reclogging was 21.7 percent in patients taking just standard drugs and 15 percent among those given Plavix. That amounted to a 36 percent lower risk for people taking Plavix.
In an editorial in the New England journal, doctors from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas wrote that the results might have been particularly good in the European study because patients generally had a lower risk than most other sufferers.
It's a PDF file of the whole NEJM article about the European study.
Lo and behold, the study sample here was 80% male.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
At $235 for a 30 day prescription, I would not call that "low cost..."
I'm more inclined to think that was more of a function of their exclusion criteria, i.e. greater than 75 years old, more than 12 hours after the start of symptoms, ST segment elevation, etc. and the demographics, in particular age cohorts, of female coronary artery disease morbidity and mortality, than a patriarchal plot.
Chris Rock
It was not my intention to imply a patriarchal plot. However, the years and studies are piling up, with little representation for approximately 50% of the drug recipients.
you got that right! my motherinlaw was just put on Plavix and is she screaming about the cost. she says its nothing more than a high dose asprin.
as opposed to several tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a week in the ICU or bypass surgery. Or the thousands for meds to keep you alive after you've become a cardiac cripple.
Well let's see.... $235 a month... get rid of cable tv, get rid of cell phone, eat home cooking as opposed to lunch... keep the car for a couple of years....
It's an option... you have the option of paying for the plavix or not... free country.
What I don't want to do is pay for your plavix if I choose to budget for health care and you don't.
Nothing personal... maybe a family member could help... I know that I'd help my mom or sister with the cost of meds if they needed it... and I wouldn't go to your house and beg or steal your money for my meds if I didn't budget for it..
The problem is that the Dems and libs think that if it cost more than $25.00 that "the government" should pay for it... well guess what ..... we're the government. Or better yet.. make a law that makes Plavix cost only $25... then they'll just do what the vaccine makers do.... not make it.
Just ask the Cubans and Russians about "free" or "government" mandated price controls..
She's wrong. It inhibits blood clotting by a different mechanism of action than aspirin.
Thanks for the ping.
As compared to hospitalization, heart/vascular surgery, stroke, stroke rehab, long term care for those totally disabled by stroke, its cheap as hell.
No one is making her take it. If it is no more than aspirin, then why is she?
I know that ,you know that but she thinks all Dr's are idiots who are trying to kill her .and im not joking bout that she has a mental problem when it comes to Dr's.
So she spend her time bitching about it.
My father in law bitches about it and doesn't take it.
Hard to say which is worse. sarc.
Thanks, neverdem. Let's hope the approval of this one is genuine and we don't pick up the pieces and buy our dead before a recall.
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