A partnership among five major healthcare organizations was announced today to initiate the first city-wide program for advanced cholesterol testing and management in the United States. The announcement was made at the Columbus Regional Conference Center at The Medical Center.
The partners in this program are The Columbus Research Foundation, The Medical Center, The Center for Diabetes and Metabolism, LabCorp and LipoScience. The program is designed to educate the community and its providers in the newest guidelines for advanced cholesterol management and to encourage treatment according to the most recent guidelines. The organizations involved plan to support this effort through enhanced educational focus about the advances in guidelines for cholesterol management to healthcare providers and the community at large. In addition, these organizations have established resources, available to all area healthcare providers, to carry out the necessary laboratory testing on their patients to meet these guidelines, and to ensure the tests are available and consistent with insurance coverage in the West Georgia area.
“This is exciting news for the physicians and the residents of our community,” said Dr. Steven B. Leichter, Senior Physician, Center for Diabetes and Metabolism and a leading proponent of the advanced panel of tests. “The advanced testing will make it easier for physicians to diagnose and manage the risk of cardiovascular disease, which is the number one cause of death in the United States. The outreach component will help educate physicians on the benefits of the testing and the community on healthy habits and risk and disease management,” he added.
“The Medical Center is pleased to partner with our colleagues in bringing this program to our community,” said Lance B. Duke, President and CEO of The Medical Center. “We know cardiovascular disease is a significant health issue and we look forward to this partnership to aid physicians in diagnosing and treating their patients who are at risk for this disease,” he added. “We also will collaborate on educational programs to raise community awareness of the prevalence and risk of cardiovascular disease,” he said.
Originally, guidelines for cholesterol treatment focused only on total serum cholesterol. Ten years ago, the national guidelines shifted their focus to LDL-cholesterol as a target for cholesterol treatment. In 2004, the guidelines refined their focus on LDL to advocate LDL-cholesterol levels less than 130 mg/dl for most people, and levels less than 100 mg/dl for “high risk” patients. However, recent studies have emphasized the need for more elaborate treatment goals, especially in “high risk” patients – patients with diabetes, prediabetes, smokers, people with strong family history of heart disease, people with known hypertension or cholesterol abnormalities, or history of cardiovascular disease themselves. The reason for this shift in treatment goals relates to the type of cholesterol disorder most people, especially “high risk” people have, and the question of whether LDL-cholesterol adequately describes risks in these people.
The majority of people, especially people at high risk, do not have a form of cholesterol disorder in which elevated LDL-cholesterol is the only abnormality. These people have a form of cholesterol disorder called mixed lipidemia, in which various cholesterol fractions are abnormal. Because one of the abnormalities involved is the inclusion of LDL particles in another cholesterol fraction, called VLDL, and the inability to measure LDL particles trapped in VLDL by traditional LDL measurements, and because of the high prevalence of this abnormality, focus on two newer measures of cholesterol has recently been advocated. These are non-HDL cholesterol and LDL particle counts, as opposed to LDL-cholesterol concentration.
With the advent of this new program for Columbus, part of the Columbus, Georgia Project for a healthier city, healthcare providers and the community will be educated about the new focus on non-HDL cholesterol and LDL-particle count. In addition, the partners in this program have made sure that, starting today, Columbus will be the first city in the United States to have non-HDL cholesterol and LDL-particle count routinely reported in laboratory testing for cholesterol profiles for all. All cholesterol profiles will report non-HDL-cholesterol, and LDL particle counts will be available for those people whose health benefit plans cover this advanced test. In addition, the partners in this program have made available to all providers in the community other sophisticated laboratory tests, which help describe the overall cardiovascular risk in patients.
The Medical Center will provide advanced blood tests as part of the clinical component of the lipid management program. These tests can predict vascular risk and insulin production capabilities.
LabCorp will work with LipoScience to provide the NMR LipoProfile test, a fractionated lipid test using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This LipoScience product is the first NMR-based clinical test to measure and count lipoprotein particles, which carry cholesterol throughout the body and play a major contributing role in the development of atherosclerosis. NMR technology is recognized by the American Diabetes Association and the American College of Cardiologists.
Physician and community education programs are scheduled to begin in March.