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CardioPulse Articles, European Heart Journal, Volume 33, Issue 13, July 2012, Pages 1539–1547, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehs137
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The latest CVD Prevention Guidelines emphasize changing behaviour and give more weight to population studies
The joint European Societies Guidelines on cardiovascular prevention in clinical practice were launched at EuroPRevent 2012 in May in Dublin, Ireland.
Nine societies have joined forces in a task force to produce this fifth edition of CVD Prevention Guidelines. The last document was published in 2007, and the 2012 version differs in numerous ways. First, it takes the bold step of stating that 80–90% of all cardiovascular disease (CVD) is preventable. The Guidelines then place greater emphasis on the behavioural aspects of prevention and discuss ways of making it easier for patients to change their lifestyles.
In a controversial move, taskforce chair Professor Joep Perk (Kalmar, Sweden) introduced the GRADE system for the grading of evidence in order to increase the weight given to population studies. Traditional grading systems gave studies with a double-blind cross-over design (often industry sponsored drug studies) a strong rating, but this rigorous methodology could not be used in population studies of smoking, physical activity, etc. It was believed that there was so much information in large population studies that they had to be upgraded in scientific value.
