The treatment gap in coronary artery disease and heart failure: community standards and the post-discharge patient.

Progress in vascular biology, epidemiology, clinical trials, and cost-effectiveness analyses have allowed development of guidelines for risk reduction in patients with vascular disease and congestive heart failure. However, these advances appear necessary but not sufficient to promote implementation of these guidelines for treating coronary artery disease (CAD) and congestive heart failure (CHF). Evidence from the United Kingdom and Europe, and estimates from the United States, suggest that a large "treatment gap" exists between recommended therapies for patients with cardiovascular disease and the care that they are actually receiving. Despite known interventions with proven efficacy to reduce disease recurrence and death from CAD and CHF, only a minority of patients are receiving any intervention whatsoever. A second problem is that, among those receiving care, many are undertreated resulting in a very small number of patients reaching goals and recommended levels of therapy. Third, the levels of intervention and the proportion of patients at goal that should be attainable (i.e., community standards) are not known. A variety of barriers exist for implementation of preventive cardiology services. Although the patient has a chain of opportunities for risk reduction, it is not clear which of the links in this chain (inpatient/hospital programs, specialist/generalist communication, ambulatory care, or patient compliance) is the major reason for the treatment gap. An ongoing project, the American College of Cardiology Evaluation of Preventive Therapeutics (ACCEPT), will attempt to quantify the treatment gap in coronary disease patients in the United States and will try to identify those barriers playing the greatest role in limiting the optimal care of the coronary disease patient.