“A bit too high” Mark’s LDL

39-year-old Mark had been putting off his health check-ups for years, despite his wife Sarah’s gentle but persistent reminders. “You’re almost 40,” she’d say, “when was the last time you had blood work done?” Finally, with his milestone birthday approaching and Sarah’s encouragement (and perhaps a bit of nagging), Mark reluctantly scheduled his preventive screenings.

When the results came back, his total cholesterol was within the normal range. His LDL was – as Mark casually dismissed it – “a bit elevated, but nothing serious.” He was ready to file the results away and move on.

But Sarah wasn’t convinced. “Just because you don’t want it to be serious doesn’t mean it isn’t,” she insisted, encouraging him to use the automated interpretation service to get a clearer picture of what his numbers really meant.

A lipid profile is a test that must always be interpreted individually, in the context of the patient’s cardiovascular risk. In this case, we are dealing with a person with a very high cardiovascular risk (based on the SCORE2 scale), so LDL values that would be “slightly elevated” for a healthy individual are more than doubled in this patient.
Therefore, medical intervention is required to reduce the risk of cardiovascular complications such as a heart attack or stroke.

says Dr. Leopold Rehan, PhD, MD

Doctor of Medical Sciences, graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at the Medical University in Wrocław, specialist in internal medicine, professionally associated with the Enel-Med Medical Center.