2021 European guidelines on cardiovascular prevention: Challenges for an evidence‐based patient care.

This year, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) presented its 2021 guidelines of cardiovascular (CV) prevention in clinical practice 5 years after the last update.1 "Guidelines" are defined as information intended to advise medical staff on how something should be done or what something should be done.2 Several studies have shown that the implementation of guidelines was associated with an improvement in clinical outcomes and have demonstrated that the guideline-driven medicine is also cost-reducing and increasing physician satisfaction.3 Unfortunately, still a high number of patients do not receive the quality of care they need and the control of CV risk factors remains suboptimal across several European countries.4 Recently, patient-centred care has been considered to better understand patient's perspectives when recommendations are formulated5 and to involve patients in evidence-based decision-making and in efficient care.6 The new 2021 guidelines on CV prevention1 described in an exhaustive manner and with a holistic approach how to intervene in clinical practice, both at the individual and at the population levels, to reduce the burden of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (ASCVDs). In these guidelines, class III recommendations do not advise to initiate a combination of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blocker treatments, or statin therapy in premenopausal female patients who are considering pregnancy, or are not using adequate contraception, or in patients with dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease who are free of ASCVD. Recommendations are classified according to the class of recommendation, being class I as "recommended or indicated", class IIa as "should be considered", class IIb as "may be considered" and class III as "not recommended". [Extracted from the article]