New high cholesterol treatment guidelines well received from medical community

Research in the medical community has now given cardiologists a goal to reach in treating patients who have high cholesterol.

New guidelines on how to treat cholesterol from the American Heart Association means much more expansive treatment, according to Monique Freund with Mayo Health Systems in La Crosse.

She says one helps deal with catching the health affliction as early as 2 years of age and the guidelines, updated from 2013, will allow for more personalization on treatment.

“If you get your calculated risk,” she said, “and you get a number “x,” it doesn’t just mean, ‘OK, you hit “x,” here you go.’ It really has to take into account other things, like your family history.”

Previous criticisms of the old guidelines included that it didn’t address how to treat those older than 75 or younger than 40

“We have been given a specific target,” Freund said, “that the physician should be aiming for after initiating treatment — somewhere in the 30-50 percent reduction in the number that you started with.”