Lipid Clinic Appointment

Had my most disappointing lipid clinic appointment in 16 years of attending. Saw a different consultant from the usual ones. When I raised concerns about angina he said "You are a 46 year old woman who doesn't smoke. I can confidently say you do not have heart disease and I am a heart doctor". How arrogant - as we all unfortunately know this is no guarantee of heart health especially for someone with FH! When I told him about my muscle pain he talked over me, saying "Your CK levels have been fine recently so it won't be caused by your statin. Atorvastatin is very well tolerated and as it is now off patent it is even cheaper for us to prescribe. Just keep taking it and I think we will leave it for a year this time before seeing you again. Make an appointment on your way out. Nice meeting you." I left, stunned and felt like crying.

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  • I don't know why some doctors refuse to accept muscle pain if CK levels are not raised. Perhaps they think it's a figment of our imagination. See the post on statin myopathy and be re-assured that there are some doctors who take it seriously.

    I have to tell you Seahorse that the pain and stiffness in my fingers has completely disappeared since I stopped taking atorvastatin, and that came on after a year of taking a low dose.

    Please, before anybody accuses me of being anti-statin, I am not. I just get fed up with the refusal of some doctors to accept what their patients are telling them.

  • I would say: make these bloody doctors take statins and continue if they start getting side-effects and see how they like it! - but chances are that they won't suffer the worse side-effects. I've even met a doctor who said he takes statins even though he doesn't have high cholesterol because statins are risk-free. I never saw him again, even though I hadn't yet taken any statins. No drug is risk-free.

    Like Aliwally, my Atorvastatin aches built up slowly. I also had insomnia when I started taking them. Maybe that should have been a clue.

    By the way, if all else fails and you want to raise your CK levels to make them consider an unrelated problem, try a long (30+ mile) bike ride about 3 days before your blood test. That did it for me and worried the doctors unnecessarily ;-)

  • Thank you for introducing me to the rxisk site. It is really comprehensive. A warning for animal lovers, it does contain details of experiments.

    All the results of the drug trials are included.

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