Overview of the updated recommendations of the European Society of Cardiology on cardiovascular prevention (2021)

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the updated recommendations of the European Society of Cardiology on cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention 2021, which were designed to help clinicians to choose, use and implement the necessary diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive strategies based on the common decision of physician and patient, taking into account patient’s peculiarities and preferences. The main focus is on changes in cardiovascular risk stratification and strategies to achieve CV prevention goals in several clinical categories: relatively healthy young people and the elderly, patients with atherosclerotic CVD, and other specific clinical conditions. For determining the degree of risk, which is currently defined as the absolute probability (in %) of any fatal and non-fatal CV event over the next 10 years, it has been proposed the scales SCORE2 (in the younger 70 years) and SCORE2-OP (in the older 70 years) in the modification for countries with low, moderate, high and very high risk. Therapeutic measures to control risk factors and lifestyle modifications include a step-by-step approach, depending on the personal characteristics of patients, in particular — the level of CV risk, the benefits of controlling individual risk factors and modifiers, comorbidities, and patient preferences.