Statins show promise to reduce major complications

Statins have been shown to reduce complications from cardiovascular surgery. To determine whether statins might also help those undergoing major lung surgeries, a team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center conducted a well-designed study that randomized patients to receive either a statin or placebo before and after surgery. They found that patients undergoing major lung resection experienced fewer complications overall, however, the differences between groups for specific complications or changes in inflammatory markers failed to reach statistical significance.
Because encouraging trends were observed, the authors have called for further evaluation in a larger multicenter, randomized, controlled trial. In an Editorial Commentary that accompanied the report, Betty C. Tong, M.D., of the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery of Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC), concurred. 'Imagine all the people who could potentially have benefited from the knowledge gained by this trial had it accrued as originally intended. With continued enthusiasm and surgeon commitment to multicenter clinical trials, we will be able to elucidate further the role of therapies such as this in preventing complications after lung resection,' noted Tong.
The original study design called for 480 patients to be enrolled. In part because previously unpublished data on the efficacy of the statin (atorvastatin) to reduce postoperative atrial fibrillation were released soon after the trial began and it became challenging to find patients who were not taking the drug, only 164 patients were randomized into two groups.