Circulation Topic Review

Treatment of dyslipidemia with moderate-dose statins leads to improved outcomes for patients with diabetes mellitus and high to moderate cardiovascular risk.Previous performance measures focused on attainment of low-density lipid levels rather than appropriate treatment with statins. Such performance measures could lead to overtreatment with high-dose statins.Use of a performance measure that credits appropriate clinical treatment rather than only low-density lipoprotein attainment shows that almost 85% of veterans 50 to 75 years of age are receiving appropriate dyslipidemia management.However, nearly 14% of patients with diabetes mellitus but without ischemic heart disease were potentially overtreated with high dose statins.