AIMS Increasingly HMG CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) are being used for primary prevention of vascular disease in patients with a raised cholesterol but at low absolute risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). This study uses clinical trial results to explore the limits of absolute safety for statin use in such patients. METHODS The major placebo controlled statin outcome trials were identif...

BACKGROUND The Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) course has been widely implemented and approximately half a million prehospital caregivers in over 50 countries have taken this course. Still, the effect on injury outcome remains to be established. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between PHTLS training of ambulance crew members and the mortality in trauma pat...

OBJECTIVES To assess the influence of the form of presentation of the results of clinical trials on the quantitative perceptions of cardiologists regarding the efficacy of drugs for the primary and secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and their likelihood of prescribing them. METHOD We conducted a survey of 1,408 cardiologists in Spain who were randomly allocated of three questionna...

This paper investigates the effects of inequality in the presence of voluntary risk-sharing. In any period, an agent’s resources are composed of his share of a secure endowment (wealth, land) and a random component (labor income). To be sure, the distribution of wealth does not affect the Pareto optimal payoff vectors but, by changing the autarchic utilities, affects the set of these payoff vec...

The testable implication of the complete risk-sharing hypothesis depends on what is assumed on households' relative risk aversion (RRA) coefficient. We therefore use a hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility function, which includes increasing, constant, and decreasing RRA as special cases, to test this hypothesis. Using household level total non-durable consumption data from Indian vi...

Active portfolio management is concerned with objectives related to the outperformance of the return of a target benchmark portfolio. Here we consider an objective that relates the probability of achieving a given performance objective to the time it takes to achieve the objective, in this way balancing risk and return. As a special case, our analysis includes the case where the investor wants ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE In 1991, the North American Symptomatic Carotid Endarterectomy Trial (NASCET) reported the benefit of carotid endarterectomy for 659 patients with 70% to 99% stenosis. Follow-up continued until 1997. METHODS The present study examined the risks and causes of ipsilateral stroke in the randomized groups and in those who had delayed endarterectomy or continued on medical t...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has emerged as the predominant electrical treatment strategy for patients on pharmacological therapy who present heart failure with wide QRS and low ejection fraction. The objective of this study was to investigate whether cardiac resynchronization therapy improved mortality and morbidity among patients with heart failure. METHODS ...

Response to: Diamond DA and Ravnskov U. How statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Expert Rev Clin Pharm 2015;8(2):201-210.

INTRODUCTION The effect of cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention measures aimed at elderly patients requires further evidence. We investigated the effect of statin treatment (targeted to achieve guideline goals) on CVD outcomes in different age groups to determine whether statins are more beneficial in the elderly. MATERIAL AND METHODS The primary endpoint of this post hoc analysis of the G...