Sebastian Debus: writing C review and editing. lower risk of major amputation in patients with chronic limb\threatening ischemia (HR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.58C0.93) and lower risk of cardiovascular events (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.70C0.92) in patients with intermittent claudication during 5?years of follow\up. Safety outcomes did not differ among the study groups. Conclusions Initiating statin therapy in patients with peripheral arterial occlusive disease after index revascularization is efficient and safe with an effect size comparable to earlier studies. Awareness campaigns for evidence\based optimal pharmacological treatment among patients are recommended. (value).CLTI indicates chronic limb\threatening ischemia; and IC, intermittent claudication. Long\Term Safety Outcomes in the Reduced Matched Study Sample We did not detect significant differences in the probability for incident diabetes mellitus (in the reduced sample) or myopathy between the study groups (Table?3 and Figure S4). Sensitivity Analyses The results for effectiveness outcomes and safety outcomes were largely similar when fitting the Cox models directly to the unmatched data (Figure S5). Without adjustment for confounding, statin users had even more favorable Chlorhexidine effectiveness outcomes, but safety outcomes were hardly affected. The effect of statins was robust to the inclusion of other important medication groups, ie, angiotensin II receptor blockers or angiotensin\converting enzyme inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, \blockers, or oral anticoagulation (Figure S6). The effect of statins did not significantly differ between men and women, except for amputation in patients with CLTI (HR in women: 0.54 [95% CI, 0.29C0.76]; HR in men: 1.10 [95% CI, 0.85C1.42]) (Figure S7). Stratifying the analysis by age revealed that older patients (75?years) benefit most from initiating statins for survival and diabetes mellitus in patients with IC (Figure S8). Further, there were no sizeable differences when stratifying by discharge years (Figure S9). The same was true for statin intensity (patients taking Rabbit Polyclonal to DECR2 high\intensity statins: n=415, 6.2%), where the CIs for low\to\moderate intensity and high\intensity statins overlapped for all outcomes (Figure S10). We found a significant association between high\intensity statin use and myopathy in patients with IC. No differences were detected when stratifying by procedure type at index stay (Figure S11). Discussion This is the first real\world study assessing the effectiveness and safety of initiating statin therapy in symptomatic patients with PAOD after revascularization in a large nationwide cohort. Compared with nonusers, new users of statin therapy had a considerably lower relative and absolute probability of all\cause mortality in both CLTI and IC, major amputation in CLTI, and cardiovascular events in IC. At the same time, the incidence of diabetes mellitus and myopathy was not associated with new statin prescription. As same as that documented in primary prevention, 34 we found no evidence for the assumption that new patient groups benefit less from statins, emphasizing the importance of quality improvement and awareness campaigns to further promote their prescription. Valid guidelines call for more evidence on the comparative effectiveness of pharmacological therapy along the full spectrum of clinical reality. 35 Yet, existing real\world evidence stems from smaller randomized controlled trials with short follow\up or observational studies based on smaller registries, single centers, geographic regions, or predominantly male patients. The particular merit of routinely collected data from health insurance claims is the large Chlorhexidine sample size, long follow\up, and high variety and completeness of information available to adjust for confounding allowing study of the full heterogeneity of patients in daily care. Especially, rare and potentially late outcomes, such as major amputations and the incidence of myopathy and diabetes mellitus, could be analyzed with sufficient statistical power. 36 , 37 We included these safety outcomes, Chlorhexidine while prior studies focused mostly on effectiveness. Yet, our study present the central findings both for absolute and relative.