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Vascular disease commonly complicates diabetes. Control of risk factors, including serum cholesterol, is associated with a reduction in vascular risk.
Grade C Recommendation SIGN Guideline 55
Further information: www.sign.ac.uk/guidelines/fulltext/55/section4.html
It is unclear from the literature how frequently this should be undertaken, but the English NSF recommends annually. In addition there is no indication as to at what age cholesterol above 5 should be treated. At this stage it is recommended that all patients with diabetes on the register (which is those 17 and over) should have an annual cholesterol measurement.
Practices should report the percentage of patients on the diabetes register who have had a total cholesterol measured in the previous 15 months.
In verifying that this information has been correctly recorded, a number of approaches could be taken by a primary care organisation:
i. inspection of the output from a computer search that has been used to provide information on this indicator
ii. inspection of a sample of records of patients with diabetes to look at the proportion with recorded serum cholesterol
iii. inspection of a sample of records of patients for whom a record of serum cholesterol is claimed, to see if there is evidence of this in the medical records.
Prepared By Jean Keenan