New heart disease and stroke prevention guidelines released | blog.heart.org

There has been significant media coverage this week about the release of four new cardiovascular prevention guidelines.  These critically important documents are basically best practices for healthcare providers across the nation.  At both the June and October AHA National Board of Directors meetings, there were several discussions concerning the evolving collaboration between the AHA, ACC, the NHLBI and other groups to help shepherd these guidelines to completion, which was achieved today with their publication. These new guidelines focus on the very important areas of obesity, cholesterol,  lifestyle and risk assessment, and are based on rigorous, comprehensive, systematic evidence reviews originally sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.  The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology worked with a number of professional organizations in the process of finalizing these guidelines, and multiple stakeholder organizations were invited to review and endorse the final documents.