MED PAGE TODAY: Modest Statin Uptick After ACC/AHA Guideline Change

Cardiology CME/CE

‘Significant clinical inertia persists in lipid management’

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by Salynn Boyles  Contributing Writer

March 02, 2017

This article is a collaboration between MedPage Today® and American Heart Association:

Use of statin therapy increased only modestly in patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) following the 2013 publication of American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guidelines calling for more aggressive use of the lipid-lowering drugs, researchers reported.

An analysis of trends in the use of moderate- to high-intensity statin and nonstatin lipid-lowering therapies among more than 150 cardiology practices found that while statin usage has increased overall and in the CVD cohort, this increase largely occurred prior to the publication of the guideline.

“One-third to one-half of eligible patients were not receiving evidence-based, moderate-intensity to high-intensity statin therapy after publication of the 2013 ACC/AHA guidelines,” wrote Yashashwi Pokharel, MD, of St. Luke’s Mid-America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., and colleagues.

The findings indicate the need for more aggressive interventions to improve guideline-directed statin use, they wrote in JAMA Cardiology.

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 https://www.medpagetoday.com/cardiology/dyslipidemia/63525