Baseline Characteristics
The baseline characteristics comparisons between the atorvastatin 40mg group (n=475) and the atorvastatin 80mg group (n=151) are presented inTable 1 . About 97% of the patients included in the analyses were male with a mean age of 50 ± 9 years. Most of the patients originate from Asia (72.7%) and the Middle East (24.3%) (Table 1 ). In addition, diabetes, hypertension, history of smoking, and family history of CAD were highly prevalent in the studied population with the following proportions: 47.3%, 40.6%, 46.8%, and 15.5%, respectively. These characteristics were balanced between the two study groups. However, history of a previous CAD was significantly more prevalent in the atorvastatin 40mg group compared to the 80mg group (13.5% vs. 6%; P = 0.012).
The mean LDL-C level in the atorvastatin 80mg group was 130 ± 44.7 mg/dL compared to 110 ± 41.9 mg/dL in the atorvastatin 40mg group (P<0.001), while the baseline levels of liver enzymes were significantly lower in the atorvastatin 80mg group (Table 1 ).
Sixty percent of the patients were admitted with the diagnosis of STEMI, while 33.5% had NSTEMI. Around 80% of the patients underwent PCI with the proximal left anterior descending artery (LAD) as the most common identified culprit lesion (36.3%). The atorvastatin 80mg group had a higher prevalence of STEMI events compared to the atorvastatin 40mg group (76.8% vs. 54.9%; P<0.001). Similarly, more patients in the atorvastatin 80mg group underwent PCI compared to the 40mg group (87.4% vs. 75.4%; P=0.002). The implantation of drug-eluting stents (DES) was more frequent in the atorvastatin 80mg arm compared to the 40mg arm (74.2% vs. 62.9%; P=0.035).
The use of other medications for ACS was similar in both groups, as shown in Table 2 . Almost 100% of the patients in both groups were prescribed aspirin and P2Y12 inhibitors, while 71.4% of the patients in the atorvastatin 40mg group compared to 66.9% of those in the atorvastatin 80mg group were prescribed an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or an angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), and more than 90% of the patients in both groups received a beta-blocker.