Preoperative Statin Use Strongly Linked With Lower Mortality After Rectal Cancer Surgery

Statin use the year before surgical resection for rectal cancer is strongly associated with reduced all-cause postoperative mortality, suggests a study published in Colorectal Disease.

“Several extensive retrospective studies have demonstrated that statins decrease postoperative mortality in noncardiovascular surgery. However, these studies include a wide variety of surgical procedures, and studies focusing on just rectal cancer surgery are lacking,” researchers wrote. “The impact of statin therapy on early postoperative mortality following rectal cancer surgery has not previously been reported.”

For the study, researchers tapped the Swedish Colorectal Cancer Registry for data for all adults who underwent abdominal rectal cancer surgery in Sweden from January 2007 through September 2016. Among a total 11,966 patients who underwent surgical resection for rectal cancer, 25% had one or more prescriptions for a statin 12 months before surgery and were thus considered statin users for study purposes.

Researchers next used baseline demographic propensity scores to match statin users with nonusers to create 3017 patient pairs for comparison.

The rate of 90-day all-cause mortality in matched groups was 0.7% for statin users compared with 5.5% for nonusers, they found. Moreover, findings showed significantly reduced cause-specific mortality for cardiovascular events, respiratory events, sepsis, and multiorgan failure in statin users.

“The significant postoperative survival benefit of statin users was seen despite a higher rate of cardiovascular comorbidity,” researchers wrote.

Prospective randomized controlled trials are warranted, they concluded, to determine the existence of a causal relationship.

—Jolynn Tumolo

Reference

Pourlotfi A, Ahl R, Sjolin G, et al. Statin therapy and postoperative short-term mortality after rectal cancer surgery. Colorectal Dis. 2021;23(4):875-881.