New European guidelines extend measures to prevent heart disease
New guidelines from the European
Society of Cardiology extend measures for the prevention of heart disease and recommend more aggressive targets for blood pressure and cholesterol lowering in high-risk patients.
“The most important development in the new guidelines is that they
cover atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease as a whole rather than focusing
just on the prevention of coronary heart disease,” explained David
Wood, Imperial College, London, and a member of the guideline task force.
To assess risk they use the new SCORE model — based on European
data rather than the previously used United States data. Lifestyle interventions
and drug treatment should be considered in any patient scoring an absolute
10-year risk of greater than 5 per cent, based on their sex, age, smoking
history, blood pressure and cholesterol level ratios.
Goals for total cholesterol are <5mmol/L and <3.0mmol/L for low-density
lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol for most patients, but targets have been
tightened for patients with atherosclerotic disease, including those
with diabetes (total cholesterol <4.5mmol/L and LDL-cholesterol <2.5mmol/L).
Blood pressure goals have also been lowered, to <130/80mmHg for patients
with established cardiovascular disease or diabetes. |
