Table 4 Relative risks for preventing CVD events from preventive CVD pharmacotherapy versus no medication (95% CI) (applying to all CVD risk strata).

From: Preventive Pharmacotherapy for Cardiovascular Disease: A Modelling Study Considering Health Gain, Costs, and Cost-Effectiveness when Stratifying by Absolute Risk

Outcome

Statin*

Anti-hypertensive**

Double therapy (as calculated for this study)#

Total CHD events (non-fatal and fatal)

0.73

(0.67 to 0.80)

Cochrane Review3

0.8140

(0.73 to 0.89)

(Using SD = 5% of the point estimate)

0.59 (0.50 to 0.69)

(used in this modelling)

Total stroke events (non-fatal and fatal)

0.71

(0.62 to 0.82)

USPSTF Review29

0.7540

(0.68 to 0.82)

(Using SD = 5% of the point estimate)

0.53 (0.42 to 0.66)

(used in this modelling)

  1. *These results are consistent with a long-term trial that found that among individuals with LDL-C ≥ 190 mg/dL, pravastatin reduced the risk of CHD death, cardiovascular death and all-cause mortality by 28% (p = 0.020), 25% (p = 0.009) and 18% (p = 0.004), respectively, over a total of 20-years of follow-up41. USPSTF: US Preventive Services Task Force.
  2. **Results from Law et al. for those aged 60–69 years for one medication at the standard dose in the range for the mean systolic BP for those in this age-group in NZ (based on NZ survey data42), ie, 138 mmHg for men and 132 mmHg for women.
  3. #The effects from each medication are assumed to be independent. To calculate the aggregate effect of double therapy, the relative risks from each monotherapy were multiplied together. The Ersatz Excel plugin was used to generate the 95% CI by running 2000 iterations of a log-normal distribution.
Back to article page