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Moderate Risk Example
Read through the following 3 cases to see various ways you might use the risk assessment tool in different situations.
Moderate Risk Case 2
Nancy is a female patient aged 65 with 125/80 mm Hg blood pressure, total serum cholesterol of 5.9 mmol/L, HDL cholesterol of 1.1 mmol/L with no history of diabetes or family CVD. She smokes a pack of cigarettes a week and is very overweight with a BMI of 30, but says it’s too hard to change her lifestyle.
Feedback
The risk is moderate (12%), so medication is not recommended in the guidelines, unless there are additional risk factors or lifestyle change has been ineffective after 3-6 months.
Some patients may be very unmotivated to make any changes to their lifestyle and prefer to take medication. Alternatively, they may be motivated to improve their diet and exercise but already have a very healthy lifestyle or do not see any improvements in cholesterol or blood pressure after 3-6 months of change. In these cases medication may reasonably be considered at an earlier stage, before reaching the high risk category.
Sometimes it becomes clear that people are saying yeah, yeah I should but I am actually not going to right now – I say I would really like to work with you on this when you’re ready so please let’s check your blood pressure in 3 months or let’s make an arrangement to follow up on this and I can help you do it
Open Peer Discussion- Clinical resources
- Case studies
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Peer discussion
Moderate Risk Case 2
Nancy is a female patient aged 65 with 125/80 mm Hg blood pressure, total serum cholesterol of 5.9 mmol/L, HDL cholesterol of 1.1 mmol/L with no history of diabetes or family CVD. She smokes a pack of cigarettes a week and is very overweight with a BMI of 30, but says it’s too hard to change her lifestyle.
Feedback
The risk is moderate (12%), so medication is not recommended in the guidelines, unless there are additional risk factors or lifestyle change has been ineffective after 3-6 months.
Some patients may be very unmotivated to make any changes to their lifestyle and prefer to take medication. Alternatively, they may be motivated to improve their diet and exercise but already have a very healthy lifestyle or do not see any improvements in cholesterol or blood pressure after 3-6 months of change. In these cases medication may reasonably be considered at an earlier stage, before reaching the high risk category.