Background Statins reduce the risk of death, myocardial infarction and stroke in patients with coronary heart disease and others at high cardiovascular risk.

Purpose Currently atorvastatin is one of the top 5 most costly medicines at King Fahd Medical City; therefore a drug use evaluation was conducted to assure adherence to the National Cholesterol Education Program recommendations.

Materials and methods A retrospective randomised chart review analysis was conducted between the periods of May to June 2010 for a total of 107 patients on atorvastatin treatment.

Results Out of 107 patients who were evaluated, 41% were males and 59% females. Our data showed that the baseline lipid profile was not obtained in 23% of patients and baseline liver profile in 43% of them. Only 52% of patients had their LDL cholesterol controlled sufficiently within the target based on recommended guidelines; while, 26% of them did not reach the target and 22% had no lab results despite being on atorvastatin treatment. Targets were specified based on the patient risk factors although risk factors for hyperlipidaemia were poorly documented.

Conclusions Our data suggested poor documentation of risk factors in patients' files. Moreover, patients did not meet their targets of LDL levels and a correlation was found that the higher the risk of coronary heart disease, the lower the percentage of subjects meeting their targets. This finding was revealed as adherence to the recommended target in only 52% of patients which is an alarming number. In addition, dosing adjustments and other antihyperlipidaemic medicines were not fully used.