High Blood Cholesterol and ATP III: Guidelines for Health Benefit and Health Care Providers

Health care and health benefit providers are faced, now more than ever, with the increasing need to provide aggressive lipid management in an attempt to reduce cardiac-related morbidity and mortality and the associated human and system costs. Amid this growing need, we are faced with new challenges. The removal of a recently approved cholesterol-lowering drug (cerivastatin, Baycol by Bayer) from the market has raised doubts in the minds of Americans currently using the hydroxymethylglutaryl-coenzyme. A reductase inhibitors or so-called statins for cholesterol management. Compounding the problem, the media has highlighted the issue, and many patients now question the safety of other cholesterol-lowering medications. In addition, the release of the Executive Summary of the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), which builds on two previous cholesterol guidelines, expands the role of intensive cholesterol-lowering therapy in clinical practice. 1-3 Providers need to be well educate...