The Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) IV, the long-awaited guideline recommendation to prevent or treat cardiovascular disease (CVD), looks very different from the ATP III guideline released in 2000. The new guidelines are based on at least seven randomized clinical trials (RCTs) using statin therapy and four additional non-statin RCTs. In general, the new guidelines focus on doing a risk assessment using a newly developed calculator, and treatment involves high-, moderate-, or low-intensity statin treatment. These guidelines are not without controversy and only time will be the judge of its utility.
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