Discontinuing statins was associated with a significantly increased risk of hospital admission for heart failure of about 24 percent, other cardiovascular outcomes by 14 percent, and death from any cause by 15 percent.
Study investigators said more attention is needed by all health care providers caring for elderly patients.
“We hope that future studies can shed light on the best way to balance the undeniable benefit of [statins] and the harms, especially among the elderly exposed to polypharmacy,” said lead study author Federico Rea, PhD, a research fellow in the Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy.
He continued: “Older patients have a higher absolute risk of dying, and withdrawing proven therapy shown to reduce risk of coronary/stroke events in randomised controlled trials would be expected to result in more cardiovascular events.”
