In 2014, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) introduced new guidelines reducing the risk level at which people become eligible for statin treatment to prevent cardiovascular events, from a 10-year risk of 20% to 10%. In the current literature, only one study has evaluated this guideline change in practice, and the results indicated that the guideline change has led to a large change in prescribing behaviour. However, this study indicates that the change in prescribing behaviour may be much smaller than is currently thought. The findings are important for NICE to understand that this guideline may not be getting widely applied in practice. It is also important for GPs to provide feedback on why this may be the case, and whether the guideline is clinically acceptable or not. Such discussions could lead to the development of guidelines that will be more widely adopted in practice. |