Paediatric Dyslipidemia Guidelines and Protocols for Pediatric Age Group

The American Academy of Pediatric Association with national lung heart, blood institute came up with the guidelines and protocol for screening and monitoring of Paediatric Dyslipidemia universally for all pediatric age group. It states to screen once between years 9-11 and once between ages 17-21 with non-fasting non HDL cholesterol.

Statistics shows that up to 40-60% of children and adolescence with elevated cholesterol will be missed if not appropriately been screened.

Screening for non-fasting non-HDL cholesterol is more accurate than with LDL alone. Taking out the non HDL from the whole cholesterol will give us more accurate information about the atrogenicity of the cholesterol itself. It plays the important role in developing atheroma and therefore arteriosclerosis.

Screening for dyslipidemia means the age of 2 years can be done if co-existing factor which can lead to dyslipidemia or high cholesterol such as high BMI, history of familial hypercholesterolemia that runs in the family, that may share their genes to their children like genetic predisposition for hyper dyslipidemia nevertheless environmental factors also plays major role like preferring food with high cholesterol can lead to high cholesterol at the end. Or the child has other comorbid conditions like DM, CKD that may cause high cholesterol level or may be impacted by cholesterol level.

We at GMCClinics care about prevention more than treatment. With me, high team of skilled professionals like Cardiologists, Lipidologist and Nutritionist working together as a team to make this group of our population reach the adulthood life safe and without any unexpected events.

This is Dr. Esam Haddad, Specialist Pediatrician at GMCClinics.