How I treat ... dyslipidaemia according to the cardiovascular risk profile

Abstract

peer reviewedThe new guidelines from the European Atherosclerosis Society and the European Society of Cardiology include a number of new items. Here we demonstrate their application in several different clinical examples. We focus on the 4 items most pertinent for medical practice: 1) the stratification of risk of cardiovascular disease into 4 categories ('very high', 'high', 'moderate' and 'low risk'), involving--for primary prevention cases--the use of the SCORE table, which has been calibrated for Belgium and where the risk can be adjusted according to HDL cholesterol and the presence of other risk factors; 2) the choice of more stringent therapeutic targets for LDL cholesterol (< 70 mg/dl for 'very high' risk patients, 100 mg/dl for 'high' risk patients and 115 mg/dl for patients at 'moderate' risk); 3) the choice of other therapeutic targets (non-HDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B levels) for patients at 'very high' or 'high' risk with combined dyslipidaemia; and 4) follow-up of lipid parameters and muscular and hepatic enzymatic profiles