Cardiologia Croatica, Vol. 7 No. 11-12, 2012.
Review article
What is different in the new European guidelines on cardiovascular diseases prevention when compared with previous guidelines?
Željko Reiner
; University Hospital Centre Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
New European guidelines on cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention in clinical practice reflect the consensus of nine major European professional societies dealing with this topic. The main differences when compared with the previous European guidelines on CVD prevention issued in 2007 are that unlike these previous guidelines which had a split up of the asymptomatic population into only two groups – those with high and those with low CVD risk, in the new guidelines four levels of CVD risk exist: very high, high, moderate and low risk. In the new guidelines it is recommended that risk factor screening should be considered in adult men ≥40 years and in women ≥50 years of age or if postmenopausal. More European countries are at low risk than in previous guidelines and the importance of psychosocial risk factors is stressed. New is also the risk age concept. Naimly, the risk age of a younger person with several CVD risk factors is the same as that of a significantly older person with no risk factors. Concerning blood pressure (BP) it is stressed that lifestyle measures are needed for all hypertensive patients, that all the major antihypertensives are more or less equal for clinical use and that target BP is <140/90mmHg. In patients with diabetes target HbA1c for CVD prevention is <7.0% (<53mmol/mol), target BP is <140/80mmHg and statins are recommended to reduce cardiovascular risk. Target LDL-cholesterol for very high risk patients is <1.8mmol/L (<80 mg/dL), for high risk patients <2.5mmol/L (<100 mg/dL) and for all others <3.0mmol/L (<115 mg/dL). Of course, all smoking has to be avoided but new is that exposure to passive smoking should be avoided as well since it also increases risk of CVD.
Keywords
cardiovascular risk; blood pressure; cholesterol; diabetes mellitus; smoking
Hrčak ID:
94694
URI
Publication date:
4.12.2012.
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