Dyslipidemia observatory: Treatment of hypercholesterolemia in Spain, context and levers for improvement in clinical practice

Abstract

Introduction and objectives: The treatment of dyslipidemia exhibits wide variability in clinical practice and important limitations that make lipid-lowering goals more difficult to attain. Getting to know the management of these patients in clinical practice is key to understand the existing barriers and to define actions that contribute to achieving the therapeutic goals from the most recent Clinical Practice Guidelines.

Methods: Observatory where the information gathered is based on routine clinical practice and the experience from the healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of dyslipidemia in Spain. The information is collected by health area through: (i) face-to-face meeting with three different medical specialties and (ii) quantitative information related to hypercholesterolemia patients' management (ad-hoc questionnaire). Information includes patients' profiles, assistance burden, guidelines and protocols used, goal attainment, limitations and opportunities in clinical practice.

Results: 145 health areas are planned to be included, with the participation of up to 435 healthcare professionals from the 17 Autonomous Regions of Spain. Information collection will result in aggregated data from over four thousand patients.

Conclusions: This observatory aims to understand how hypercholesterolemia is being treated in routine clinical practice in Spain. Even though the preliminary results show important improvement areas in the treatment of dyslipidemias, mechanisms to drive a change towards health outcomes optimization are also identified.

Keywords: Agentes hipolipemiantes; Clinical practice patterns; Dislipemias; Dyslipidemia; España; Evaluación de procesos y resultados en atención de salud; Hipercolesterolemia; Hypercholesterolemia; Hypolipidemic agents; Outcome assessment; Pautas de práctica clínica; Spain.