Usefulness of statins pretreatment for the prevention of postoperative atrial ﬁbrillation in patients undergoing cardiac surgery.
BACKGROUND
postoperative atrial ﬁbrillation (AF) remains the most common arrhythmic complication following cardiac surgery. We performed a meta-analysis based on all currently available randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to conﬁrm the hypothesis that statins pretreatment may lower the risk of postoperative AF in patients undergoing cardiac surgery.


RESULTS
the published literature was scanned by formal searches of electronic databases up through August 2010. RCTs were eligible for inclusion if they compared preoperative statins treatment versus control in patients scheduled for cardiac surgery and had the data of postoperative AF reported. Prespeciﬁed criteria were met by eight RCTs involving 841 patients. During the follow-up period, 80 of 422 patients (19.0%) in the statins pretreatment group developed postoperative AF, signiﬁcantly less than 149 of 419 (35.6%) patients assigned to the control group ( P < 0.001). Postoperative hospital stay was signiﬁcantly shortened in patients pretreated with statins compared with the control ( P < 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
this meta-analysis supports the effectiveness of statins pretreatment on reducing the incidence of postoperative AF in patients undergoing cardiac surgery.
Shanghai Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
Lili
L
Dong
Feng
F
Zhang
Xianhong
X
Shu
D000368:Aged; D001281:Atrial Fibrillation / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019161:Hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitors / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D015994:Incidence; D007902:Length of Stay; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
D019161:Hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitors