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Heart Disease In The News You can teach old docs new tricks! In this week's edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, doctor's prescribing habits regarding the use of statin drugs in elderly patients after heart attacks was studied. The use of statins in these patients during two different time periods was compared: before the publication of a major study documenting the benefits of statins after heart attacks, and after publication of this major study. It was found that after publication of the study showing the benefits of statins, doctors increased their use of these drugs in post-heart attack patients by more than 3-fold. The authors conclude, "It is possible to shift practice if the evidence of benefit is strong, the intervention is easy to implement, and the intervention is marketed aggressively." This is one very few studies documenting that physicians actually respond to scientific data - though, apparently, giving them fancy pens with "Simvastatin" on them also helps. |
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