Up to 30 percent of patients who undergo cardiac surgery experience recovery complications due to acute kidney injury. Previous research suggested administering statins pre- and post-operation might help mitigate the risk of kidney problems, but new findings published in JAMA suggest they may actually increase the risk of complications.
Researchers divided 615 patients into a placebo group and a statin group. Among the group given statins, acute kidney injury occurred in 21 percent of individuals, compared to 19.5 percent in the placebo group. Patients in the statin group who had never received the drug previously experienced acute kidney injury 22 percent of the time, as opposed to 13 percent among patients who had.
"This double-blinded, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial found no evidence that high-dose perioperative atorvastatin reduces the incidence or severity of acute kidney injury following cardiac surgery," the authors concluded. "Among patients naïve to statin treatment, high-dose perioperative atorvastatin increased serum concentrations of creatinine, and there was some evidence that statin treatment may increase acute kidney injury among patients naive to statin treatment with preexisting chronic kidney disease … These results do not support the initiation of statin therapy to prevent acute kidney injury following cardiac surgery."