The raison d'etre of this website is to provide you with hard scientific information which may help you make informed decisions in your quest for health (so far I have blogged concise summaries of over 1,500 scientific studies and have had three books published).

My research is mainly focused on the effects of cholesterol, saturated fat and statin drugs on health. If you know anyone who is worried about their cholesterol levels and heart disease, or has been told to take statin drugs you could send them a link to this website, and to my statin or cholesterol or heart disease books.

David Evans

Independent Health Researcher

Thursday, 26 November 2015

Cardiac surgery patients taking statins have a 24% increased risk of death

This study was published in Clinical Infectious Diseases 2009 Apr 1;48(7):e66-72

Study title and authors:
Preoperative statin use and infection after cardiac surgery: a cohort study.
Mohamed R, McAlister FA, Pretorius V, Kapoor AS, Majumdar SR, Ross DB, Norris CM
Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19228110

This study explored the effects of preoperative statin use in adults who had undergone cardiac surgery. The study included 7,733 nontransplant cardiac surgery patients who were followed for 30 days.

The study found:
(a) Patients taking statins had a 24% increased risk of death compared to patients not taking statins.
(b) Patients taking statins had an 11% increased risk of death due to infection compared to patients not taking statins.
(c) Patients taking statins had an 8% increased risk of any infection compared to patients not taking statins.

 
 
Links to other studies: