An upcoming webinar will explore what laboratorians need to know about new risk assessment guidelines for cholesterol management and cardiovascular disease (CVD), which are expected to heavily impact how doctors treat CVD and manage those taking cholesterol-lowering statin medications.
Cardiovascular disease and epidemiology expert Paul Ridker, MD, MPH, will be the speaker. A pioneering researcher exploring the nexus of inflammation, C-reactive protein, and atherothrombosis, Ridker directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is the Eugene Braunwald professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
In light of new guidelines issued in 2013 by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, people taking statins no longer need to lower their LDL cholesterol to specific targets; instead, they’ll keep taking statins as long as they are considered at risk for developing CVD. Clinicians can use a risk calculator to assess the patient’s risk of strokes and heart attacks, and the webinar will explain how this calculator differs from traditional prediction models, such as the Framingham Risk Score. Ridker will also discuss current thinking on how to best determine a patient’s risk of CVD, and he will explain what the newest guidelines recommend for statin use.