Cholesterol Calculator Flawed

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An online risk calculator created by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology so greatly overestimates risk that Steve Nissen, MD, a past ACC president, thinks it should be halted.   Why?  It would mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs.  Go figure (I mean that sarcastically). Read this NYT piece for yourself and see how they used flawed data to create this crap.  I am not a big fan of these “risk” calculators anyway.  Sure, you may be able to scare some people into changing but I just wonder which drug company is behind it.   I am also very leery about using statins on flawed lipid panels (that don’t actually even measure the LDL) and that is why I use the NMR Lipid Profile now.  Lastly, primary prevention of heart disease by using a statin is still very sketchy (NNT is 1:60).

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