Doctors aren’t bovver’d!

The July edition of the International Journal of Clinical Practice reports on research carried out at Birmingham University and Lund University in Sweden. 750 doctors from Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea and the U.K. took part in a 'From the Heart' study.

61% of doctors felt it was acceptable for only 47% of their patients reaching their cholesterol goals. “Although doctors appear to appreciate the risks associated with cardiovascular disease - which they identified as a greater cause of death than cancer - the importance of lowering cholesterol does not appear to be widely endorsed” says co-author Professor Richard Hobbs from Birmingham University.

I wonder in any fact whether some of the literature, which speaks of the possible links of statins with liver cancer and with memory loss, have struck a cord with doctors, and so they are not totally convinced of BigPharma’s marketing extolling the remarkable safety of statins.

The findings of the survey included:

- Doctors in South Korea (80%) were most likely to be happy with the 47% patient success rate statistic, while doctors in Finland were least happy (48%)

- Prescribing statins and recommending lifestyle changes was recommended by 46% of doctors. This was followed by lifestyle changes alone (43%) and statin therapy alone (10%). Only 1.5% recommended no course of action.

-Doctors in South Korea (66%) and Portugal (61.5%) were most likely to recommend a combination of statins and lifestyle changes, with doctors in South Korea (23%) and Portugal (29%) least likely to recommend them.

-Statins alone were most likely to be prescribed by doctors in Brazil (15%) and the UK, France and Mexico (11%) and least likely by doctors in South Korea (2.5%) and Denmark (6%).

- The percentage of doctors using national, European or local guidelines to set cholesterol lowering goals averaged 81% and was highest in South Korea (100%) and Brazil (93%) and lowest in the UK (45%) and Singapore (52%).

Doctors reported that cancer was feared far more than cardiovascular disease and patients indicated that they were more aware that smoking and obesity were the main risk factors rather than high cholesterol.

There appears to be great scope for for health professionals to inform the public of the value of lifestyle changes - more greens, losing weight, exercise etc as well as following the recommended guidelines for taking statins in conjunction with medical advice on risk such as it may be.