Splitting Zocor Tablets Saves Millions

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Halving high-dose Zocor tablets leads to significant cost savings without reducing the drug's cholesterol-lowering effects, researchers report.

Dr. David Parra from Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, West Palm Beach, Florida told Reuters Health that the findings "add to the current available research that a tablet splitting strategy for statins is a safe and effective means to significantly reduce medication costs."

Parra and his colleagues compared the efficacy, safety, and economics of switching patients from a whole Zocor tablet to tablets containing twice as much of the drug, but which were split in half to achieve the same dosage.

Among 1331 patients converted to split tablets, their final level of LDL ("bad") cholesterol after tablet splitting was no different from that in 2099 patients who did not switch to split tablets, the investigators report in The American Journal of Cardiology.

The annual cost of Zocor (including the cost of tablet splitters) was $211,738 in a split-tablet group of 1098 patients, compared with $339,018 for 1098 patients in a whole tablet group.

Across the VA system, the investigators point out, tablet splitting of Zocor (known generically as a simvastatin) resulted in a savings of more than $46.5 million in 2003.

According to co-author Dr. Nick P. Beckey, the average wholesale prices for simvastatin 20, 40 and 80 mg tablets are the same, and he told Reuters Health, "tablet splitting simvastatin -- and other statins -- could result in substantial savings."

In fact, his colleague Roy W. Coakley concluded that "physicians should be aware of the end costs of their prescribing, and if they can make it less costly for a patient with a specific drug -- by tablet splitting -- they should prescribe that way."

SOURCE: American Journal of Cardiology, June 15, 2005.