Cardiovascular Risk Management in Clinical Practice

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) still represents the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Western countries and is expected to rise further, worldwide, in the future. The enormous impact of CVD on global health necessitates an inquiry into improvement of the existing approach to treatment. The common observation that CVD risk factors often occur in clusters may indeed represent a clinical opportunity because of the fact that the presence of a single risk factor indicates the likelihood that others are present. Clustering of multiple risk factors increases the severity of CVD risk, beyond that implied by simply adding the risk factors together. Physicians understand the multifactorial nature of CVD; in practice, they tend to treat risk factors in isolation, rather than addressing the global CVD risk continuum. A more comprehensive and effective approach to the multifactorial nature of CVD is needed. Managing the CVD risk continuum is a new treatment paradigm that can be moved forward. Tools are available to support this new model. Implementing this paradigm will help to target overall CVD risk while maintaining specific therapeutic goals for individual risk factors. This synergistic approach holds the best promise for treating total CVD risk, and reducing the mounting burden of CVD.