Thursday, August 12, 2010

The use of statins in ESRD

Renal Fellow Network recently addressed an issue that was the topic of my inaugural post five years ago.

No one's been able to show that statins are protective in ESRD. This is probably due to the multitude of atherogenic factors in renal failure which statins don't address such as hypercoagulability, the metabolic syndrome, Lp(a) and the like. It's not that statins don't help any patients with ESRD but in the aggregate any beneficial effects are overshadowed.

Despite this fact nephrologists aren't stopping statins, possibly out of concern that events may be precipitated.

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