Lipid Management

Guidelines for lipid management have been around since the 1980s, but there remains a gap in applying these guidelines to evidence-based treatment. Nurses should be aware of new and novel approaches to lipid management.

There are many treatment combinations and pathways dependent on a patient’s individual clinical picture and response to therapy, and researchers recommend escalating therapies to reach cholesterol and lipid goals. For this reason, individualized therapy and shared decision-making are imperative to meet and maintain patient cholesterol management goals. However, a knowledge gap of available treatments beyond statin treatment for cholesterol-lowering persists among general cardiovascular care practitioners.

Additionally, certain populations are disproportionately affected by the gaps in application of evidence-based treatment guidelines to health and racial disparities. For example, recent studies have found that people of racial/ethnic minorities and people without health insurance were at high risk for underutilization of medications for lowering cholesterol, despite being prescribed. Barriers with insurance rejection rates for therapies such as PCSK9i’s have been high, negatively impacting health outcomes. There is a lot of work to be done in standardizing cholesterol management with nurses at the front lines in this important and ever-changing work.