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The National Cholesterol Education
Project has developed a monitoring process for calculating the risk
of cardiac events, based on a number of input parameters.
Smoking history, patient gender and age, total cholesterol, HDL
cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and blood pressure can be used to
calculate the risk of cardiovascular events individual patients.
This percentage risk is very useful in monitoring the progress
of therapy for hypertension and dyslipidemia. It is not utilized
and clinical practice, because the forms required to calculate the
risk involved several pages of lookup tables to determine the risk.
The Team Chart Concept
allows the instantaneous calculation of this risk value, and its
comparison to previously determined values, giving the practitioner
and the patient the opportunity to review results and to intervene
in therapy.
The American Heart Association
has recently recognized that there is an independent correlation
of CRP with coronary artery events. The risk of this correlation
can be linked with the additional risk of dyslipidemia to generate
a relative risk value based on both CRP and total cholesterol to
HDL ratios. Practitioners concerned about cases of moderately increased
disease risk can use these findings to help guide therapeutic decisions.
This situation is still very
much in flux, and some practitioners waiting before implementing
CRP testing while others move ahead based on present research findings
and clinical outcomes. The Team
Chart Concept allows the practitioner to make that
choice now, because CRP values with risk calculation and reporting
can be entered into the software by the end user without requiring
the help of a programmer.
The above discussion is irrelevant to the
practitioner who is blinded by traditional paper-based or electronic
document management systems. That practitioner is unable to
apply basic research results to clinical practice, depriving patients
and the public of needed health-care interventions.
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Lipid Monitoring
and Cardiovascular Disease
