Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Aug 26, 2020; 12(8): 419-426
Published online Aug 26, 2020. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v12.i8.419
Impact of cardiologist intervention on guideline-directed use of statin therapy
Manouchkathe Cassagnol, Ofek Hai, Shaqeel A Sherali, Kyla D’Angelo, David Bass, Roman Zeltser, Amgad N Makaryus
Manouchkathe Cassagnol, Ofek Hai, Kyla D’Angelo, Roman Zeltser, Amgad N Makaryus, Department of Cardiology, NuHealth/Nassau University Medical Center, East Meadow, NY 11554, United States
Manouchkathe Cassagnol, Department of Clinical Health Professions, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. John’s University, Queens, NY 11430, United States
Shaqeel A Sherali, Roman Zeltser, Amgad N Makaryus, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, NY 11549, United States
David Bass, St. Lawrence Health System, Potsdam, NY 13676, United States
Author contributions: Cassagnol M, Hai O, Zeltser R, Makaryus AN designed the research and wrote the paper; Sherali SA, D’Angelo K and Bass D performed the research, Zeltser R and Makaryus AN critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content.
Institutional review board statement: NuHealth/Nassau University Medical Center Institutional Review Board; Approval IRB# 17-139.
Informed consent statement: This retrospective study with anonymized data does not require informed consent due to no identifiable data as approved by our institutional review board.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflicts of interest exist for any of the authors relating to this study.
Data sharing statement: No additional data.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Amgad N Makaryus, MD, Professor, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; Chairman, Department of Cardiology, Nassau University Medical Center, 2201 Hempstead Turnpike, East Meadow, NY 11554, United States. amakaryu@numc.edu
Received: February 28, 2020
Peer-review started: February 28, 2020
First decision: April 25, 2020
Revised: May 13, 2020
Accepted: August 1, 2020
Article in press: August 1, 2020
Published online: August 26, 2020
Core Tip

Core tip: Statins have an important and well-established role in the prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. However, several studies have reported widespread underuse of statins in various practice settings and populations. Review of relevant literature reveals opportunities for improvement in the implementation of guideline-directed statin therapy (GDST). We aimed to examine the impact of cardiologist intervention on adherence to GDST in the ambulatory setting. Our evaluation shows that although overall adherence to GDST was suboptimal, there was no statistical difference in appropriate statin use based on guidelines between groups managed by general internists alone or co-managed with a cardiologist. These findings highlight the need to design and implement strategies to improve adherence rates to GDST across all specialties.