Letter

Familial hypercholesterolaemia

Screening needs a fresh approach

BMJ 2007; 335 doi: 10.1136/bmj.39395.370278.80 (Published 15 November 2007)
Cite this as: BMJ 2007;335:1007.2

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

  1. David S Wald, senior lecturer,
  2. Jonathan P Bestwick, statistician,
  3. Nicholas J Wald, professor
  1. Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, London EC1M 6BQ
  1. d.s.wald{at}qmul.ac.uk

    Hadfield and Humphries favour cascade testing for familial hypercholesterolaemia (identifying relatives of affected individuals)1 over the child-parent screening approach2 but accept that cascade testing may only identify 50% of affected cases in the population. Cascade testing may have been “tried and tested” and found to be useful in identifying cases of familial hypercholesterolaemia within families, but it is not tried and tested as a general screening policy.3 Identifying all, or most, families first is …

    Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment

    Subscribe

    Article access

    Article access for 1 day

    Purchase this article for £20 $30 €32*

    The PDF version can be downloaded as your personal record

    * Prices do not include VAT

    Rapid responses

    THIS WEEK'S POLL

    Read related article

    See previous polls

    BMJ most popular