Open house in Antwerp 21/11/2010

The annual meeting of the IMAWF Belgium was as usual a pleasant occasion to meet old friends and broadening the medical knowledge by cross fertilization of different specialties. Dr Willy Lipschutz opened the meeting with a short review of the activities of the past year: French speaking European congress in Paris in nov 2009, grant for the Israeli delegation at the EACD congress in Brussels in june 2010, letters of protest to the Lancet for the political bias.This year we invited Dr Willy Kostucki cardiologist in the Clinic Antoine Depage in Brussels: His lecture called “Cholesterol chmolesterol abee gezunt! Why I don’t prescribe statines anymore to my patients” was a provocative discussion topic as it pointed several ethical and medical problems common to all physicians.The question he asked was: How can we defend the massive use of statines when there is almost no objective evidence of any benefit on cardiovascular mortality, the only non criticable endpoint and when there are more and more various side effects of these drugs? Only its significant effect on morbidity has been proven. A very careful and critical analysis of international literature on the subject raised discussion points such as the bias induced by conflicts of interests in expensive research.This point was of common interest for all specialties. Dr Arnon Afek, cardiovascular pathologist, deputy director of Tel Hashomer hospital and member of the IMAWF direction was the moderator of the discussion that was very passionate and polemic as it touched fundamental aspects of decision taking in common medical practice.The discussions continued joyfully at a brunch with nice music brought by Willy Lipschutz, Willy Kostucki and his klezmer friends.

REFERENCECHOLESTEROL LOWERING, CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES, AND THE ROSUVASTATIN-JUPITER CONTROVERSY. A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL.Michel de Lorgeril, MD; Patricia Salen, BSc; John Abr hito Hamazaki, PhD; Willy Kostucki, MD; Harumi Okuyama, PhD; Bruno Pavy, MD; Mikael Rabaeus, MDARCH INTERN MED/VOL 170 (NO. 12), JUNE 28, 2010