MEDizzy - A 40-year-old male comes to your office as a new patient to

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Preventive medicine 2

A 40-year-old male comes to your office as a new patient to get established for care, as he recently moved into your city from another state. He has been on medical therapy for type 2 diabetes mellitus for 3 years and has had good glycemic control. He takes metformin 500 mg bid and reports having fasting glucose levels of less than 100 on home monitoring. He has records from his previous physician that show that he had a dilated eye examination 6 months ago that was normal and a hemoglobin A1C (HgbA1C) level of 6.2 that was taken 3 months ago. He has no known history of coronary artery disease. His last fasting lipid measurement was 14 months ago. You order a fasting lipid panel today and get the following results: Total cholesterol: 235 mg/dL Triglycerides: 210 mg/dL HDL cholesterol: 45mg/dL LDL cholesterol: 162 mg/dL He states that he has not had any immunizations in “longer than I can remember.” Which of the following would be recommended for him?

ExplanationThe Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program Expert Panel on the Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (ATP III) was published in May 2001 by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. It is available on-line at: www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/cholesterol/at p3xsum.pdf. This evidence-based report provides guidelines for the evaluation and management of blood lipid levels for the primary and secondary prevention of heart disease. The basis of the recommendations for management is an overall evaluation of an individual’s risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease. Persons at the highest risk for future cardiac events are those with already established coronary artery disease or “coronary artery disease equivalents,” which include diabetes mellitus, other forms of atherosclerotic disease, or multiple risk factors that confer a 10-year CHD risk of greater than 20%. Multiple studies have shown that elevated LDL cholesterol levels are a risk for coronary artery disease and that lowering LDL levels can reduce the risk of events. ATP III goals are targeted at LDL levels. For persons with LDL levels above this goal, the options for lowering LDL can include therapeutic lifestyle changes, lipid-lowering medications, or a combination of both. In a patient with coronary artery disease, diabetes mellitus, or other CHD equivalents, the LDL goal level is 100 mg/dL. In this population, therapeutic lifestyle changes alone would be recommended for those with LDL levels of 100–130 and medication could be started concomitantly with lifestyle changes for those with LDL above 130, as most persons would require medication to achieve the recommended goal. For the patient in this question with an LDL of 160 mg/dL, therapy with an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor would be recommended first-line therapy to try to get his LDL to goal. Therapeutic lifestyle changes alone would be very unlikely to reduce his LDL to less than 100 mg/dL, but are still an important part of his overall lipid management program and should be recommended along with medication therapy. Neither increasing his dosage of metformin nor adding insulin would be recommended as they would not be expected to improve his dyslipidemia significantly and because his diabetic control is appropriate. At his follow-up visit, the patient’s lipid levels have met the recommended guidelines; therefore, the recommendation would be to continue with his current therapy. Increasing the dosage of his statin, adding a fibric acid, nicotinic acid, or referring the patient to a dietician would all be appropriate considerations in someone who had not successfully reached his goal lipid levels. A recent addition to the ATP III provides an option for changing the target LDL goal for those at the highest of risk for coronary events. For persons with known coronary artery disease, or CAD equivalent, and multiple risk factors, such as diabetes or continued smoking, one could consider using an LDL of 70 as a goal. For this patient, with diabetes but no history of CAD or equivalent, the recommended goal would remain an LDL of 100 or less. Immunizations should be a routine part of the adult health maintenance evaluation. All patients with diabetes are recommended to be vaccinated with the pneumococcal vaccine (PPV-23) both because of the incidence of pneumonia in diabetics and the increased risk of complications should infection occur. A recent recommendation for all adults is to provide a single dose of Tdap vaccine in place of one booster dose of Td. The rationale for this is to attempt to reduce the incidence of pertussis in the population, as pertussis has been recurring in the United States in spite of routine childhood vaccination. Hepatitis A and B are routine vaccinations for children. The current recommendation for adult immunizations against these diseases is to target high-risk adults. Diabetes is not considered a high risk for these infections. Herpes zoster vaccine is recommended for adults over the age of 60.