Authors

• Mario Ivanuša — Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, Zagreb, Croatia — ORCID: 0000-0002-6426-6831

Keywords

dyslipidemia, cardiovascular rehabilitation, cardiovascular risk factors

DOI

Full Text

**Introduction:** Even 1 of 4 patients discharged after acute coronary syndrome will suffer from a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular (CV) death over the next five years. (1) The risk of these events is highest during the first year from the initial CV event (1) and can be reduced by treatment in accordance with the guidelines and participation in the CV rehabilitation program. (2) The full approach to the CV rehabilitation that encompasses the evaluation of the CV status, therapeutic education, non-pharmacological and pharmacological measures and cardiovascular training successfully reduces the present impact of risk factors. (3) This paper aims to show the incidence of CV risk factors and controls of dyslipidemia in patients enrolled in the outpatient CV rehabilitation program and to compare the results with the available data. **Patients and Methods:** The data on patients enrolled in the outpatient CV rehabilitation program in the Institute for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Rehabilitation in Zagreb in 2015 that completed the program by 15th March 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. The frequency of elevated body mass index, dyslipidemia, hypertension, diabetes/glucose intolerance, active smoking, and frequency of administration of individual doses of statins as well as the control of dyslipidemia in patients taking hypolypemic drugs (target values of LDL cholesterol 2 was recorded in 88.4%, dyslipidemia in 78.7%, and hypertension in 75.8% of them. Diabetes/glucose intolerance was recorded in 27.5%, while there was 13.5 active smokers at the time of conducing the outpatient CV rehabilitation programs. The results of the dyslipidemia control are shown in **Table 1**. ### Table 1: Control of dyslipidemia in patients enrolled in outpatient cardiac rehabilitation program. | **Dyslipidemia** | **Number** | **%** | | --- | --- | --- | | *High-intensity statins* | | | | atorvastatin 40 – 80 mg (135/157) | | | | rosuvastatin 20 – 40 mg (22/157) | 157 | 75.8% | | *Standard dose of statins* | 33 | 15.9% | | **Total on statins** | **190** | **91.8%** | | *Dyslipidemia control in patients on lipid-lowering medication, low-density lipoprotein <1.8 mmol/L* | 111 | 58.4% | **Discussion and Conclusion:** In patients undergoing the outpatient CV rehabilitation, there is a high prevalence of CV risk factors, as shown in the data previous published by the Institute. (4) In comparison with the data on patients from the recently published study EUROASPIRE IV (5, 6), the prevalence of risk factors is identical, except for hypertension that is more common in Croatian patients (75.8% versus 45.0%). The frequency of administration of statins, particularly intensive statin therapy is high, while the control of dyslipidemia is much better than in the study EUROASPIRE IV (5, 6) (58.4% versus 25.6%). Despite this, the LDL cholesterol values did not equal the desired therapeutic values in a great number of patients.

Literature

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