RedScrubs
The Resource for Medical Professionals

“This may not come as news to cardiologists, but the rest of us (ok, me) were impressed that statins appear to reduce the severity of strokes.”

I guess I would say to this blogger to give it a break. The news was only released on Feb. 26th , 2009 in a press release stating that Mayo Clinic researchers have shown that patients who were taking statins before a stroke experienced better outcomes and recovery than patients who weren’t on the drug — even when their cholesterol levels were ideal.

The rise of serious heart risks in drugs that treat chronic conditions has become one of the FDA’s top worries and is changing how the agency weighs new meds, according to John Jenkins, director of the agency’s Office of New Drugs. And so the FDA is thinking about how to weigh possible side effects as more drugs used to treat diabetes, pain and other conditions also appear linked to heart attacks.
It’s about time someone took notice of the frivolous way FDA is regulating drugs and the side-effects of such medications as avandia, drugs for rheumatoid arthritis and others. I agree that we are long past looking at just plain old liver failure as a potential side-effect; we have bigger bones to chew and its about time FDA came up to bat.

According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers who reviewed Medicare records found that only less than half (44.5%) of seniors with stable coronary artery disease who complained of symptoms like angina were taken to the catherization lab for percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) without first confirming by a stress test that they were indeed suffering from reduced blood flow to the heart (ischemia). Guidelines published by the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Society for Cardiology Angiography and Intervention recommend these tests.