Statins May Improve Survival of Hemorrhagic Strokes

Sept. 23, 2014

An article in HealthDay News reported that people using cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) while in the hospital for a hemorrhagic stroke were more than four times more likely to survive than people who weren't taking the drugs, according to a new study.

There hasn't been a standard treatment recommendation, says the study's lead author, Dr. Alexander Flint, the medical director of neuroscience quality at Kaiser Permanente in Redwood City, Calif. Now, he said, physicians should know that taking patients off statin treatment in the hospital "may carry a risk of substantially worse outcome."

The article went on to say the findings from this study aren't considered definitive because it wasn't designed to prove that the statin treatment directly caused the lower risk of death. Read the full story