Ischemic heart disease: effectiveness and safety of statin treatment in a malaysian tertiary healthcare facility

Purpose: To determine the effectiveness and safety of statins in ischemic heart disease (IHD) patients in a Malaysian tertiary hospital.
Methods: This cross-sectional observational study was conducted at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Medical Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and patients were included if they were diagnosed with IHD and treated on statins for three months, or had IHD with no statins prescribed.
Results: A total of 72 patients admitted to the medical ward due to IHD were enrolled in this study. Fifty three of them were statin users and 19 patients had no history of statin treatment. The most commonly used statin was lovastatin (n = 42, 79.2 %), atorvastatin (n = 5, 9.4 %), simvastatin (n = 3, 5.7 %) and rosuvastatin (n = 3, 5.7 %). Risk factors found in the study population were dyslipidaemia (n = 52, 72 %), hypertension (n = 58, 80.1 %), diabetes (n = 36, 50 %), advanced age (n = 63, 87.5 %), smoking (n = 19, 26.4 %) and family history (n = 16, 22.2 %). Patients that were on statin were more likely to achieve targeted LDL-C levels compared to those that did not achieve LDL-C levels (χ² = 7.25, p = 0.007). There were also no difference in liver enzyme values between statin users and non-statin users.
Conclusions: This study provides information regarding safety and efficacy of statins in the local population and the need for a more stringent approach in achieving targeted lipid levels in IHD patients.

Keywords
Effectiveness of statins; Safety of statin; Ischemic heart disease; Cardiovascular; Liver enzymes; Hypretension; Diabetes