State Consensus Guideline for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Primary Care Settings

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States and is often attributable to poorly controlled yet modifiable risk factors. All national guidelines strongly recommend performing global CVD risk assessments to inform therapeutic intensity, but only a minority of clinicians regularly quantitate their patient's CVD risk. Not surprisingly, many patients are not at goal with regard to blood pressure, lipids, and the appropriate receipt of antiplatelet therapy. Given this background, the Colorado Clinical Guidelines Committee partnered with the Colorado Prevention Center to craft a simple algorithm for CVD risk reduction that emphasizes risk quantification and aggressive treatment for established CVD. The Colorado Clinical Guidelines Committee assembled a multidisciplinary team of health professionals with the goal of creating a comprehensive primary and secondary prevention framework that targets primary care physicians. We described the rationale, methods, and ultimate deployment of this guideline statewide in Colorado and hope this process may be a resource to other states interested in harmonizing a public health approach to CVD risk reduction.

A Point-of-Care Algorithm to Guide Proper Device Selection for Ambulatory Electrocardiography

“…Our approach to creating the algorithm was based on our previous work forming clinical pathways in cardiology for the management of atherosclerotic heart disease and heart failure. 14,15 By intent, we formed a multidisciplinary expert panel to develop a simple process inclusive of relevant specialists to design a clinical algorithm to address this unmet need. The panel consisted of noninvasive cardiologists, interventional and electrophysiology subspecialists, an emergency medicine physician, and 2 internists from our hospital medicine division.…”