November 6, 2007
Crestor doesn't add benefit for patients with advanced heart failure, study finds
Study data presented at the American Heart Association meeting showed that adding AstraZeneca's Crestor (rosuvastatin) to an optimised heart failure treatment did not significantly reduce cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction or stroke in patients with advanced heart failure, compared with placebo.
The CORONA randomised trial involved more than 5000 patients with chronic, symptomatic, systolic heart failure of ischemic origin. After a median follow-up of about 2.5 years, the findings showed that compared with placebo, those taking Crestor experienced an 8-percent decrease in the combined primary endpoint of cardiovascular death or myocardial infarction or stroke, which was not considered significant. The results also demonstrated that those who took AstraZeneca's drug experienced significantly fewer hospitalisations, compared with those in the placebo group.
AstraZeneca indicated that most of the deaths in the study were "due to sudden death, or non-ischemic causes, which did not appear to be impacted by statin therapy." There had been concerns that statins could further damage the heart muscle in heart failure patients, explained Michael Cressman, AstraZeneca's executive development director for Crestor in the US. However, study researchers said there "were no excess muscle-related side effects or other side effects in the Crestor group, suggesting there's no harm in using a statin in patients with heart failure“.
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November 5, 2007
U.S. healthcare system expensive and error-prone, survey finds
The U.S. spends more than double what other countries spend on medical care, yet U.S. patients are more likely to report medical errors and go without necessary care, according to a new seven-nation survey.
Approximately 12,000 adults in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States were polled. The U.S. had the highest rates of patients reporting medical test errors, medical mistakes or medication errors. One-third of U.S. patients with chronic conditions reported a medical, medication, or test error in the past two years, according to the Commonwealth Fund. Still, more than $6,600 per capita is spent on healthcare in this country.
The country with the lowest rate of reported errors was Germany with 16% of adults citing an error in their medical care. The study is published online in Health Affairs.
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