Now that Vioxx has been pulled from the market, what to do? My office has certainly been deluged with calls. From what I can gather, the study leading to the recall showed an increased risk of heart attack and other CV complications 18 months after patients took 25mg of Vioxx. Here are some options to ponder if you are on Vioxx:
1) Switch to Celebrex at 200mg once a day or 100mg twice a day, or Bextra at 10mg a day. A recent study has shown that Vioxx increases CV risk significantly more than Celebrex.
2) Change from a COX-2 to another class of pain medication.
Like the Baycol incident, it will be interesting to see physicians’ response to a recall of a major drug.
