Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), including coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease are the leading cause of mortality and disability in the world.1 In Spain, CVDs continue to be the leading cause of death, followed by tumors and COVID-19 even during the height of the pandemic.2 As the underlying pathological process in most CVDs, arteriosclerosis is a gradual process that occurs over decades. The main associated risk factors are widely known. Among them, dislipidaemia is a well-known risk factor whose control has proven to reduce Cardiovascular morbimortality.3, 4 While there is a large therapeutic armamentarium for dyslipidaemia the level of control over lipid abnormalities is clearly suboptimal, particularly in patients with a (very) high cardiovascular risk, where reducing absolute risk is crucial.5, 6, 7, 8

An update of ESC Guidelines on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Clinical Practice was recently published.9 These guidelines are supported by the major Spanish scientific societies involved in cardiovascular disease, including the CEIPV (Comité Español Interdisciplinario de Prevención Vascular).10, 11, 12, 13

Therapeutic targets have been established and widely accepted for lipid-lowering therapies. However, the reference values provided on laboratory biochemistry reports continue to be based on the distribution of values in the general population; unfortunately, the "desirable" values according to the level of cardiovascular risk of the patient all-too-often not provided. In spife of the SEA (Spanish Society of Arteriosclerosis) and 2018 SEC (Spanish Society of Cardiology) recommendations,14, 15 lipid values largely exceeding "desirable" values in terms of cardiovascular prevention16 are often reported as "normal", whereas "desirable" values are reported as "abnormally low". This information may be misleading and result in therapeutic abstention in patients with "normal" values, and dose reduction in patients with "abnormally low" values. This is the reason by which a task force of experts from the main scientific societies involved in the prevention and treatment of CVDs For this reason, a working group of the main scientific societies involved in the care of patients at vascular risk have prepared this document with a basic consensus proposal on the determination of the basic lipid profile in cardiovascular prevention, recommendations for its implementation and unification of criteria to incorporate the objectives of lipid control appropriate to the vascular risk of the patients in the laboratory reports.17, 18