Sat, Dec-15-07, 06:25
|
 |
Senior Member
Posts: 863
|
|
Plan: Atkins-ish/IF-ish
Stats: 385/278/180
BF:something, maybe
Progress: 52%
Location: MN
|
|
Quote:
"[The] dangers are that it may prevent people from seeing a cardiologist and not getting a proper evaluation for their heart disease," Zipes said.
"First of all, there are no symptoms of high cholesterol," Nissen agreed. "The only way you know is via a lipid profile, and interpretation of these is not simple.
"Doctors must judge risk, patients cannot."
Messmer added that this potential problem is particularly relevant in the case of statins -- which, unlike some other types of medicine, do not provide patients with noticeable proof of their effect.
"When a nonmedical person has heartburn, they either are getting relief or not," Messmer said. "The same applies to pain meds, cough and cold meds, and other OTC meds.
"It is so clearly the contrary with statins, I find it absolutely amazing the FDA would even waste the time to consider it ... I find it unbelievably ill-conceived that they would put the treatment of a component of one of our largest killers -- atherosclerosis -- into untrained hands."
Cutting doctors out of the picture could also lead to sporadic use, physicians noted.
"In most cases, statins are usually taken for life," said Dr. Jeffrey Brinker, professor of cardiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. "If one takes OTC medication, there is less psychological motivation to take it consistently."
|
Why am I astonished by the arrogance of this statement? There are doctors who can't judge a lipid profile accurately and will prescribe statins based on total cholesterol, apart from all the other statin prescribing issues...like, I don't know, they've been shown to have no real benefit for women. :dry:
Like I'm EVER going to let a doctor be the sole assessor of MY risk in taking any medication. S/he can advise me what s/he thinks is the best course of treatment and then I'll research the situation and decide what I think...after all, I have a brain, internet access and know how to use a search engine. And if worse comes to worse, I can always get a second medical opinion.  And then I'll do what I think is best under the circumstances.
It seems to me that at least part of the good doctor's objection is financial. If the statin is sold OTC, patients might not visit as frequently, and he might lose some of his share of the big pharma lolly. Or maybe I'm just cynical. |