The risk of post-operative delirium may be greater for seniors taking statins than it is for those who don’t take the cholesterol-lowering drugs, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Canadian researchers examined the records of more than 280,000 elderly patients who underwent surgery from 1992 to 2002 and found that those who were taking statins had a 28 percent greater risk of experiencing delirium after surgery — a relatively common complication in patients over 70 — than those who were not.

"Our results suggested that this association was more than a coincidence, particularly among patients who received higher doses of statins and had longer duration noncardiac surgeries," write the authors, led by Donald Redelmeier, MD, of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Ontario. They recommend that elderly patients temporarily stop taking statins before surgery to reduce the risk of delirium and resume taking the drugs after surgery if needed.

In a dissenting commentary published in the same journal, Edward Marcantonio, MD, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, argues that the study’s "outcome measure for delirium… has serious limitations," and says he believes it’s "premature to recommend stopping the use of statins in elderly surgical patients."

—Irene Tsikitas