New one-stop guideline for cardiovascular health in Canada

Medications to follow to treat cardiovascular diseases are ineffective as clinicians are rightly concerned that there are too many guidelines with too many individual recommendations to be practical and useful for daily use, particularly in primary care. Typical patients with multiple illnesses require the access to many guidelines at the same time, and some recommendations are not harmonized and often seem contradictory.

A new one-stop guideline takes a 360-degree approach to managing heart disease in Canadian patients, with 83 recommendations in one easy-to-use reference. The guideline is published in CMAJ Canadian Medical Association Journal.

An update to a 2018 publication, the Canadian Cardiovascular Harmonized National Guideline Endeavour (C-CHANGE) resource includes 48 new or revised recommendations out of the 83, from 11 cardiovascular-focused guideline groups across the country.

Aimed at primary care and other health care providers, the C-CHANGE guideline contains actionable recommendations for Canadian adults with or at risk of cardiovascular disease, including people with obesity, diabetes or hypertension; people with dyslipidemia, atherosclerotic vascular disease or heart failure; and people with atrial fibrillation, stroke or dementia.

It also includes health behaviour recommendations for all Canadians to address risk factors for these conditions, such as dietary, smoking and physical activity considerations.

Previously more than 50% of the guideline contains new or revised recommendations from the previous 2018 version. This guideline is also more comprehensive and holistic in caring for patients with multimorbidity.

In the past 4 years, many of the national guideline organizations have launched new, evidence-based recommendations from changes in medication management to new thresholds for lipid levels in secondary prevention, hope this resource helps primary care clinicians stay up to date with many constantly evolving cardiovascular guidelines, so their patients can get the best care possible, ended the researchers.

Reference:

New one-stop guideline for cardiovascular health in Canada; CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION JOURNAL, DOI:10.1503/cmaj.220138.