Most strikingly, the researchers say, is that only 5 percent of those quickly given a statin died in the hospital, compared to a 16 percent death rate among patients who discontinued the drug or never received the drug at all.
How Statins Help
More than 12 million Americans currently take statins, making them the most prescribed drug in America. The drugs help the heart by blocking an enzyme in the liver that makes cholesterol. They thereby significantly lower a patient’s risk of heart attack.
But Fonarow explains that statins may play an even more immediate role, explaining the benefit that immediate statin use has for even those who took the drug previously. In animal studies, the drugs have been shown to increase the amount of nitric oxide in the body, a chemical which serves to protect the heart. Theoretically, the sooner a statin is given to a patient after a heart attack, the less damage that occurs.
Current guidelines only call for statins to be prescribed before a heart-attack patient is discharged from the hospital, but Fonarow hopes that more medical centers will begin to heed the results of this study and give them to patients early in the course of treatment.
"Given that patients should be given statins prior to discharge, they are readily available [in the hospital]," he said. "It makes sense that more doctors would adopt this idea."
