Statin therapy could help patients recover more quickly after cardiac surgery.
The finding is especially helpful for patients that are prone to suffering from healing complications, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons reported. The findings were published in the August 2014 edition of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
"Statins have become one of the most widely prescribed medications in the world. While they are typically used to manage high cholesterol levels, a number of researchers have been investigating the benefits of statins in other conditions, such as severe infections or following organ transplantation," said lead author Gerard J. Fitzmaurice, MRCSI, MSc, from Our Lady's Children's Hospital
The researchers reviewed existing literatures and found statins had an effect on the inflammatory responses, reducing the amount of time needed to heal after surgery from 18.7 days to 13.0. The drugs could also potentially reduce the size of scars.
Wounds found to benefit from statin therapy include those from cardiac surgery, leg wounds from a long saphenous vein harvest, and forearm wounds from a radial artery harvest. The researchers believe any wound could benefit from statin therapy, but this is yet to be proven.
"Normal wound healing involves a series of phases that ultimately leads to a scar. Many things can affect this process and it's difficult to determine exactly how statins might improve wound healing, but it would appear that they influence a number of factors in the inflammatory response," Fitzmaurice said. "Our analysis also shows that some statins are better at it than others."
The team noted the rate of chest wound infections after surgery is only about one percent, but many of these patients' wounds heal slowly as a result of underlying conditions such as diabetes.
"Based on the encouraging results in the systematic review, we would recommend consideration of an appropriately conducted, randomized-controlled double-blind clinical trial to comprehensively assess the potential role of topical statins in the promotion of post-operative wound healing," Fitzmaurice concluded.
