Methods: Three hundred thirty-nine patients (230 men, 109 women) treated with lipoprotein apheresis in Saxony, Germany, in 2018 are described in terms of age, lipid pattern, risk factors, cardiovascular events, medication, and number of new admissions since 2014, and the data are compared with figures from 2010 to 2013.
Results: Patients were treated by 45.5 physicians in 16 lipoprotein apheresis centers. With about 10 patients per 100 000 inhabitants, the number of patients treated with lipoprotein apheresis in Saxony is twice as high as in Germany as a whole. The median treatment time was 3 years. Almost all patients had hypertension; type 2 diabetes mellitus was seen significantly more often in patients with low Lipoprotein(a). Cardiovascular events occurred in almost all patients before initiation of lipoprotein apheresis, under apheresis therapy the cardiovascular events rate was very low in this high-risk group. For some cardiovascular regions even no events could be observed.
Conclusions: The importance of lipoprotein apheresis in Saxony had been increasing from 2010 to 2018.
Keywords: Lipoprotein(a); Saxony; cardiovascular events; lipoprotein apheresis; low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
© 2022 The Authors. Therapeutic Apheresis and Dialysis published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of International Society for Apheresis and Japanese Society for Apheresis.