Statins

As part of our regular reviews of your records, we have identified that you may be someone who would benefit from taking medication to help lower your LDL cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart attacks or strokes and improve your cardiovascular risk. It is generally thought that taking an appropriate dose of a statin will reduce your risk of heart attacks and strokes by around 25%.

The most commonly prescribed statins are Atorvastatin, Rosuvastatin, Pravastatin and Simvastatin.

Statins are currently recommended for:

• Patients with diabetes
• Patients with a history of Coronary Heart Disease, Peripheral Arterial Disease, Stroke or TIA, or Chronic Kidney Disease
• Patients with a QRISK2 score which suggests they may be at risk of heart disease
  • This is a score which takes into account your age, sex, height/weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and past medical history to predict your risk of a heart attack or stroke over the next 10 years.
  • If your risk score is:
    • below 10% then a statin may not be helpful
    • over 10% you should consider taking a statin
    • over 20% you would be encouraged to take a statin

In most cases this medication is something that you would take indefinitely. You will usually need a blood test a few months after starting the medication to check your cholesterol again (to make sure the medication is having the desired effect) and to check for any signs of liver inflammation (a rare side-effect of statin medication).

As a general rule of thumb:

• Diet and medication such as statins can improve (reduce) your LDL ('bad') cholesterol.
• Increasing exercise can improve (increase) your HDL ('good') cholesterol.

Even if your cholesterol is relatively low, you could still benefit from taking a statin to reduce your cardiovascular risk, as statins have benefits over and above the effect of simply reducing your LDL cholesterol, and even if your LDL cholesterol is low, your risk will be reduced if it is even lower.

Lots of patients have heard about or worry about side-effects of taking statins. In fact most patients (80-90%) do not experience any muscular side-effects at all.

• The most common are muscular aches and pains
• A very rare side-effect is a severe form of muscle inflammation (less than 1 in 100,000 patients per year)

Please have a look at the following information leaflet for more information:

https://patient.info/heart-health/high-cholesterol/statins-and-other-lipid-lowering-medicines

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/treatments/statins

If you would like to discuss this further then please book an appointment or reply to the SMS message which brought you to this page to say that you would like to start a statin.