Patients across the Gulf who are at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease need more aggressive treatment for high cholesterol, according to medical experts.

This was the view presented at the region’s first-ever Physicians Academy for Cardiovascular Disease Education (PACE) event recently held in Dubai.

Up to 180 doctors from across the Gulf attended the PACE master class which was run by three of the world’s leading cardiovascular experts; Professor John E Deanfield and Professor D John Betteridge from University College London, UK, and Professor John J P Kastelein from the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Delegates heard from local and international experts how the majority of patients in the region with high cholesterol are being successfully treated with statin drugs but that a small and important group of patients at high risk of suffering heart attack and stroke are not being treated aggressively enough.

These high risk patients are those with raised cholesterol levels who have already been diagnosed with established cardiovascular disease or diabetes and require higher doses of statin drugs to reduce their chances of suffering a potentially lethal cardiovascular event, according to experts speaking at the PACE master class.

“We are doing very well across the Gulf at treating patients with raised cholesterol levels who are at low and medium risk of developing cardiovascular disease but we are not doing such a good job with the high risk patients,” said Dr Wael Al Mahmeed, past president of the Emirates Cardiology Society.

“There’s increasing evidence that using higher doses of statins has consistently resulted in not only lower cholesterol levels but also better cardiovascular outcomes in these patients.  Doctors in the Gulf need to adjust their patients’ medications to take account of this,” added Dr Al Mahmeed.

Raised blood cholesterol is one of the most modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, making its reduction an essential part of treatment for Gulf populations who are already at greater risk of developing diabetes-related cardiovascular disease than other populations, said Professor Deanfield.

“In the Gulf, where a large proportion of the population is already overweight and at high risk of developing diabetes-related cardiovascular disease, it is even more important than in other parts of the world to be successfully treating modifiable factors such as cholesterol,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service