Two new guidelines are set to be presented at the American Heart Association scientific sessions in Chicago.
First up will be the first update to the controversial 2013 cholesterol guidelines, which will be presented on Saturday, Nov. 10, in two sessions.
Second, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will unveil its new national guidelines for physical activity on Monday, Nov. 12.
Cholesterol guidelines
Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones
For the cholesterol guidelines, the most important messages for clinical practice will be presented in a session beginning at 10:45 a.m. A second session, beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, can be considered more of a “deep dive” into the details and rationale, Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, cochair of this year’s Committee on Scientific Sessions Program, said in a teleconference with reporters.
“In the 10:45 session, we plan to cover the most important take-home messages and top-line issues,” explained Dr. Lloyd-Jones, a professor of cardiology at Northwestern University, Chicago, as well as one of the authors of both the 2013 cholesterol guidelines and these updated ones.
This will include the key changes since the AHA/American College of Cardiology Guideline on the Assessment of Cardiovascular Risk guidelines were released 2013. One major update will be the inclusion of the role of PCSK9 inhibitors, which were introduced after the 2013 guidelines were written. Moreover, the new guidelines will devote attention to personalizing treatment choices, according to Dr. Lloyd-Jones.
“The deep-dive session later that day will cover such issues as risk assessment and cost effectiveness of drug treatments for specific populations,” said Dr. Lloyd-Jones, who added that case studies will be presented to illustrate how the new recommendations should affect practice.
Because of changes in risk assessment, the 2013 guidelines, which greatly expanded the candidates for lipid-lowering therapies, were labeled “controversial” in numerous critiques published in peer-reviewed journals and elsewhere. The authors of the new guidelines hope to avoid these problems.
“Since 2013, I think there have been questions about when we should use risk scores, whether there are risk scores that might be better than others, or if there are strategies of risk assessment we should be employing beyond just risk scores,” Dr. Lloyd-Jones acknowledged. “This was a big part of the discussion in developing these guidelines, and I think you will see some pretty significant advances in how we think about which patients are appropriate for treatment and which patients in whom we might think of withholding statin therapy when benefit is unlikely.”
Despite the large number of changes, Dr. Lloyd-Jones emphasized that the document will be more concise and easier to use than the guidelines from 2013.
“The organization is modular, meaning that if you have a question about a certain aspect of management, you can go straight to the recommendation, which is accompanied by very brief text to explain the rationale,” Dr. Lloyd-Jones reported. “The presentation has been very much streamlined.”