Ezetimibe use remains common amongst medical inpatients.
Am J Med. 2014 Oct 19;
Authors: McDonald EG, Saleh RR, Lee TC
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The US Food and Drug Administration licensed Ezetimibe in 2002 due to its ability to lower LDL-cholesterol levels, a surrogate marker for the risk of coronary artery disease. The negative results of the Effect of Ezetimibe Plus Simvastatin Versus Simvastatin Alone on Atherosclerosis in the Carotid Artery (ENHANCE) trial were published in 2008. Since then we have seen six additional years without a landmark study in favor of ezetimibe. Furthermore, the new American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology (AHA/ACC) guidelines (2013) now strongly downplay the use of non-statin agents.
OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether or not ezetimibe use remains common in 2014 using a new cohort which we have created to teach residents how to do clinically relevant research.
METHODS: The McGill Teaching Unit Cohort is an anonymized prospective cohort study enrolling all patients admitted to the medical clinical teaching units of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montréal, Québec, Canada as of 2014. Information collected includes the receipt of cholesterol-lowering medications and other important demographics.
FINDINGS: Of the 783 patients enrolled on the date of analysis, 331 (42.7%) were receiving treatment for hypercholesterolemia. Of these, 156 (47%) were receiving primary prophylaxis. Overall, 323 patients (98%) were receiving a statin, 17 (5.1%) ezetimibe and 5 (1.5%) a fibrate. Users of ezetimibe were more likely to be active smokers than non-users (6/17 vs. 42/314, p=0.01); however, there were no other significant differences between important covariates or recent LDL measurements.
PMID: 25448168 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]