Treatment of dyslipidemia: we don't know all we think we know.

摘要

At the population level, the magnitude of the benefit and cost of a preventive intervention depends on three factors: the baseline risk of the person who receives the intervention, the effect size of the intervention and the long-term compliance with the intervention. The corollary of this statement is that there must be a line under which die risk is so low that the risk to benefit ratio is not acceptable for the individual patient and, most importantly, where the resources used to treat these very low-risk individuals could be used more efficiently somewhere else in the health care system. This is assuming, of course, that the politicians and public servants to whom we have delegated the administration of our health care system make the right decisions.