IDEAL Study: Our Service

Patients attending pathology services for a cholesterol test may be invited to participate. Pathology staff will provide the patient with some basic information about the study and if they are considering participating, will apply a blood pressure cuff, and direct them to a purpose-built Assessment Station for their cardiovascular risk assessment.

In the Assessment Station, the participant will be asked some screening questions, receive more information about the study and can provide their consent to participate. The participant will then complete a short health questionnaire that includes questions about cardiovascular risk factors including smoking habits and diabetes status, diet and physical activity.

Once the health questionnaire is completed the participant will have their blood pressure measured three times. This is done automatically in the Assessment Station and recorded via a customised app and sent to pathology services to calculate the patients risk of cardiovascular disease. The risk of cardiovascular disease and key risk factors are then added to the pathology blood test report and sent to the referring doctor along with treatment guidelines to assist treatment and management to prevent cardiovascular disease.

The above figure is sourced from the article 'Integration of absolute cardiovascular disease risk assessment into routine blood cholesterol testing at pathology services' by Niamh Chapman, Ricardo Fonseca, Leigh Murfett, Kevin Beazley, Rebekah E McWhirter, Martin G Schultz, Mark R Nelson and James E Sharman. The article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/cmaa034.

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