The new ACC/AHA guidelines on the treatment of dyslipidemia: cons.

In November 2013, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) published a set of guidelines on the control of blood cholesterol to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk in adults [1]. This latest set of ACC/AHA guidelines focuses specifically on cholesterol management and on statin therapy rather than other forms of dyslipidemias or alternative therapeutic approaches (as in the ESC/EAS 2011 guidelines) and recognizes that more intensive statin treatment is superior to less intensive treatment for many patients. However, the shift away from the previous ATPIII set of guidelines published a decade ago [2], which provided a comprehensive guide to lipid management, has created controversy and confusion about the relative merits of these new ACC/AHA guidelines when compared with existing guidelines such as the ESC/EAS guidelines for ‘the management of dyslipidemias [3]’. Whereas some have embraced the new ACC/AHA guidelines as ‘a step in the right direction’ for reasons of simplifying patient care, others disagree; certainly sweeping endorsements are overly optimistic and warrant greater caution