Bill Birnbauer and Penny Fannin .
Cholesterol is huge out there.
Hammered by health campaigns over the past decade, patients know heart disease is Australia's top killer and are demanding tests and drugs that will lower their cholesterol readings. Some patients want to be assessed twice a year but others are so concerned they want to be tested even more regularly. With the results comes an unrelenting pressure for cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, which have proved to be remarkably effective in reducing heart disease and deaths over the past decade. Professor Paul Nestel, head of cardiovascular nutrition at the Baker Medical Research Institute and a heart specialist at the Alfred Hospital, says the public, rather than the pharmaceutical industry, is putting pressure on doctors to prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs. Dr Moraitis puts statins second only to the pill in revolutionising and improving health care.