Survey of Personal Use of Statins by Prescribers

A total of 829 physicians and advanced practice providers within a large, mostly primary care network were surveyed about their personal use of statins and their attitudes toward patient use of these medications. The 239 respondents included 60 clinicians who were current users, most for extended periods, and 15 who had stopped statin use. Nearly one-third of the clinicians over age 40 who took statins used them for primary prevention, compared with just 7.6% of the general adult US population. Half of the current statin users felt that their personal use had a positive effect on their likelihood of prescribing them to patients. More than 10% of users had discontinued statin use due to muscle effects, with virtually no other adverse effects mentioned among the survey respondents. The incidence of statin-associated muscle symptoms was high enough to suggest that as yet unmeasurable statin muscle pathology may be a real phenomenon that has been overlooked.