Reducing Cardiovascular Disease—An Alternative Approach

Statin drugs are effective at reducing cardiovascular events, but adherence to statin therapy remains a problem for patients and their physicians. We review a paper estimating the economic costs of poor adherence to statin drugs.

The authors examined two large databases (Medicare and Market Scan databases) including 230,000 patients with hospitalization for myocardial infarction between 2018 and 2019 to determine how many patients were not adhering to guideline-recommended anti-hyperlipidemic medications. They have also calculated the potential consequences of patients who are not adhering to the recommended therapy.

The authors estimate that if all patients were receiving guideline-directed medical therapy, then a 22% relative risk reduction would occur in the 3-year period following discharge from the initial cardiovascular event. These findings are consistent with prior reports. This editorial discusses rationale and strategies clinicians can use to improve patients’ compliance with recommendations for lipid-lowering therapy.

The authors conclude that better compliance with guideline-directed lipid therapy after a cardiovascular event would lead to a large reduction in second events. Increased efforts by clinicians to improve adherence to statin therapy are warranted.