Prevention and Management of Cardiovascular Disease in Primary Care: A Comment on the PEER Simplified Lipid Guideline

In Canada, 2 guidelines provide guidance for the management of dyslipidemia. The Patients, Experience, Evidence, Research simplified lipid guidelines, intended for primary care practitioners, and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society guidelines, intended for all practitioners, are based on differing methodologies with distinct priorities and preferences. The disparate approaches may contribute to confusion among family practitioners and their co-managed patients, with the potential for compromised care, differing standards for training in the fundamentals of lipidology, and differing criteria that might be used in practice audits to evaluate quality of care.

The Patients, Experience, Evidence, Research (PEER) recommendations were considered by primary authors of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society guideline to identify areas of concordance, discordance, or agreement with qualifications.

Discordance between the guidelines is greatest with respect to interpretation of the cholesterol profile, the implications of elevated triglyceride, the utility of apolipoprotein B and non-high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol measurements, the role of nonstatin medications, and the importance of assuring adherence and avoiding undertreatment through follow-up measurement of lipid profiles. The disparate importance attached to identification of patients with enhanced risk due to an elevated lipoprotein (a) level is also apparent.

This comparison attempts to reconcile key principles of practice, to foster both high quality of care and fully informed patient-centred decision-making.