Effect of statins on ventricular tachyarrhythmia, cardiac arrest, and sudden cardiac death: a meta-analysis of published and unpublished evidence from randomized trials

Abstract

Statins have a modest beneficial effect on sudden cardiac death. However, previous suggestions of a substantial protective effect on ventricular arrhythmic events could not be supported.

Trends in Cause of Death After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

“…This finding is consistent with the effectiveness of preventative therapies, particularly statins and angiotensinconverting enzyme inhibitors, in reducing the long-term risk of myocardial infarction and sudden death in patients with established coronary disease. [21][22][23][24][25][26] The time periods in this study corresponded approximately with balloon angioplasty (early provisional stenting, [1991][1992][1993][1994][1995][1996] as the primary interventional approach, routine bare-metal stent (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002), and routine drug-eluting stent placement (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008). 27 Randomized studies have failed to show a long-term mortality advantage of bare metal stents over balloon angioplasty or of drug-eluting stents over bare-metal stents in multiple clinical settings.…”

Statins and sudden cardiac death - mini review on available data

“…Possible mechanisms which could explain the antiarrhythmic properties might involve the capacity of statins for NO-dependent endothelial function regulation, inflammation and oxidative stress reduction, highrisk plaque rupture and ischemia/reperfusion myocardial injury prevention, improvement in heart rate variability and decreased QT dispersion [14,22] . Recently Rahimi et al (2012) in a meta-analysis of 29 RCTs concluded that statin therapy did not significantly reduce the risk of ventricular tachyarrhythmia and cardiac arrest, but was responsible for a significant 10% reduction in SCDs [23] . The results of that study indicated that statin therapy is highly unlikely to have a beneficial effect on the prevention of ventricular arrhythmias.…”

“…The results of that study indicated that statin therapy is highly unlikely to have a beneficial effect on the prevention of ventricular arrhythmias. The authors concluded that reduction of the risk of sudden cardiac death was associated with the reduction of LDL cholesterol by statin [23] . On the other hand, large-scale RCTs -the Controlled Rosuvastatin Multinational Trial in Heart Failure (CORONA) [24] and the Effect of rosuvastatin in patients with chronic heart failure (GISSI-HF) [25] -showed no association between rosuvastatin therapy at a low dose and reduction in mortality from any cause.…”

Sudden cardiac death and ischemic heart disease

“…Крупный метаанализ, прове-денный в 2005 г., который включал 90 тыс. па-циентов, принимавших участие в 14 рандоми-зированных исследованиях, убедительно доказал эффективность статинов для профи-лактики ВСС у больных ИБС [19]. Прием стати-нов для профилактики развития сердечно-сосу-дистых осложнений рекомендуется всем боль-ным, относящимся к группе высокого сердечно-сосудистого риска.…”