Stroke included in clinical guidelines
21 December 2005
Guidelines for UK healthcare professionals on the prevention of all forms of cardiovascular disease (CVD) including stroke, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease and angina have been published (21 December 2005).
The guidelines were published in the scientific journal Heart, and are the result of a collaboration between The Stroke Association, The British Cardiac Society, British Hypertension Society, HEART UK, Diabetes UK and the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society.
The guidelines include stroke for the first time, which is a major step forward. Professor John Potter, who worked on the guidelines on behalf of The Stroke Association, said, “Expanding the scope of the guidelines to include stroke is an important development. Stroke is an important cause of serious disability and death, especially in the elderly population, and the evidence that we can reduce the risk of stroke through lowering both blood pressure and cholesterol is now compelling.”
The new guidelines encourage healthcare professionals to not only concentrate on people with established cardiovascular disease, but to focus equally on preventing disease in people with diabetes and apparently healthy people who are at high risk of developing disease. Prioritising such people will reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease in these groups. The guidelines recommend a healthy lifestyle and suggest targets for treatment. They also propose that everyone over 40 years of age who is apparently healthy, and is not diabetic or receiving treatment for high cholesterol or high blood pressure, should be assessed for their risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
The guidelines are available from the British Cardiac Society website.
Read the full text of this report.
