{"id":40080,"date":"2013-11-17T21:52:03","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T02:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=fellowship-training&p=40080"},"modified":"2013-11-18T16:41:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T21:41:24","slug":"the-gaps-in-the-guidelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/11\/17\/the-gaps-in-the-guidelines\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gaps in the (Guide)Lines?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending AHA.13 in Dallas this week are blogging for CardioExchange. The Fellows include\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>Vimal Ramjee<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Siqin Ye<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Seth Martin<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Reva Balakrishnan<\/strong><\/a>, and\u00a0\u00a0Saurav Chatterjee<\/strong><\/a>. You can find the previous post\u00a0here<\/a>. For more of our AHA.13 coverage of late-breaking clinical trials, interviews with the authors of the most important research, and blogs from our fellows on the most interesting presentations at the meeting, check out our <\/em>AHA.13 Headquarters<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Along with Reva<\/a>, I was also at the “Clinical Lipidology” talk this morning. The\u00a0talk by Dr. Karol Watson titled, \u201cAre there racial\/ethnic considerations for statins in primary prevention?\u201d was\u00a0very instructive.\u00a0I had not known, for instance, that the ideal dose of statins may be lower in Asians<\/a> or that the baseline creatine kinase level can be higher in black Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The talk naturally reminded me of the recently released AHA\/ACC guideline for cardiovascular risk assessment<\/a>. I realized, to my chagrin, that the recommendation for using the new Pooled Cohort Equations to predict cardiovascular risk falls into the \u201cmay be considered\u201d category for myself, several of my fellow bloggers, and most of the patients I take care of in the Washington Heights neighborhood (who tend to be Hispanic\/Dominican).<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s great that the Guidelines frankly acknowledge this, devoting almost a page to the potential for over- and under-estimation of risk for non-white, non-African-American subgroups. But as the U.S. becomes increasingly diverse<\/a>, are we also falling behind on evidence-based guidelines for a large segment of the U.S. population?<\/p>\n

Another way to look at this issue may be to acknowledge the inherent challenges of applying population estimates to individuals. As Joseph Ladapo pointed out recently<\/a>, we still know very little about how to quantify within-individual uncertainty when estimating risk. So perhaps what we really need is not the perfectly calibrated equation but a better understanding of how to engage our patients under conditions of uncertainty to make the best patient-centered decisions?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your take on the best way to adopt the new guidelines? Share your ideas with the CardioExchange community.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A blogger at the AHA.13 wonders whether we need better algorithms for assessing CV risk in an increasingly diverse U.S. or a better understanding of how to engage our patients under conditions of uncertainty to make the best patient-centered decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":532,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prevention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}