New Cholesterol Guidelines Released

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New Cholesterol Guidelines Released

The American Heart Association released new clinical practice guidelines for managing cholesterol. The focus for lowering LDL cholesterol has moved away from focusing on achieving target numbers and instead has moved toward assessing risk and implementing cholesterol-lowering statin medications as appropriate.
            This new recommendation is based on recent research that found that lifestyle changes as combined with a statin have shown the most significant improvements in cholesterol levels. They establish risk categories to determine the need for statin use. “High risk” include those who have already suffered a heart attack or stroke or suffer from cardiovascular disease, or who have abnormally high LDL levels. It is recommended that these patients use statins. For others, the American Heart Association has created a risk calculator to determine if statin use is appropriate. According to the guidelines, anyone with a risk of 7.5% or above on this calculator could benefit from statin use. Some factors analyzed in this new tool include sex, age, blood pressure, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, smoking status, diabetes, and race.
            So why is there such controversy with these new guidelines? To many, it seems that this tool promotes simply using medication to cure cholesterol instead of implementing appropriate lifestyle changes. Dietitians working in the field of cardiovascular health see this new recommendation as positive. They emphasized that anytime there is focus on cardiovascular health, people are becoming more educated and aware of changes they need to make. They are also helpful that there will be more dialogue between doctors and patients seeing that the statins are recommended along with lifestyle changes.
            Dietitians firmly believe that doctors should begin with emphasizing lifestyle changes before implementing statins and even should provide guidance to those who are on statins. As physicians become familiar with the recommendations, dietitians have the chance to help in emphasizing the importance of lifestyle changes for this population and helping patients make sustainable, lifelong changes to maintain optimal heart health.

Thalheimer JC. New cholesterol guidelines released – lifestyle changes and statin use said to make the most impact on cutting risk. Today’s Dietitian. 2014:16(3);14.

View article at: http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/030314p14.shtml

BB

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