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DGDispatch 
Statins Provide no Neurological Protection during Bypass Surgery: Presented at AANBy Ed Susman Special to DG News DENVER, CO -- April 18, 2002 -- Researchers say they could not find any link between statin use and protection against neurological events among patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery. "Our observations do not support the hypothesis that statins may prevent stroke or neurological dysfunction after coronary artery bypass graft surgery," said Lucas Restrepo, MD, a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. However, Dr. Restrepo said the study might have been too small to find a significant correlation between the two. In his report here today at the 54th annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Dr. Restrepo noted that statin drugs appear to reduce the risk of stroke by 19 to 32 percent in patients with coronary artery disease, with benefits that appear to extend beyond their lipid-lowering. He and his research colleagues attempted to see if statin pre-treatment would decrease neurological events in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG). Dr. Restrepo examined records of 2,781 patients who underwent the surgery- performed with cardiopulmonary bypass - between 1997 and 2000. A total of 1,182 (43 percent) patients were on statins before surgery. The researchers found no difference in stroke incidence (2.8 percent on statins vs. 2.5 percent controls) or neurologic injury (6.4 percent on statins vs. 7.5 percent for controls) between the two groups. Similarly, there was no statistical difference in deaths (2.5 percent on statins vs. 2.9 percent for controls). Atorvastatin was used most frequently (528 patients, 19 percent) and simvastatin was next, used by 9 percent of the cohort (253 patients). Dr. Restrepo found no significant difference in neurologic complications among patients on different statins. "A prospective, randomized trial is needed to verify our results," he said, "and determine the relevance of dose and duration of treatment, factors that were not considered in our analysis."
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