[Detection, evaluation, and treatment of high blood cholesterol in adults].

This report is based on the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults, which was recently issued by the National Institutes of Health of the United States of America. Also known as the Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III, this new report updates two earlier such reports on high cholesterol. While continuing to concentrate on treating patients with coronary heart disease, the new report advocates more intensive treatment in order to reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in specific groups of individuals, pays special attention to primary prevention among patients with multiple risk factors, and recognizes as a secondary prevention concern a cluster of heart disease risk factors known as "the metabolic syndrome." Other issues that the ATP III report covers include therapeutic lifestyle changes to reduce LDL, LDL-lowering drug therapy, and the management of specific dyslipidemias.