Support for Lipid Disorders

If you are being treated for a lipid disorder, it’s important to have regular follow-up visits with your NYU Langone specialist so that he or she can monitor your progress. During these visits, your doctor checks your lipid levels using blood tests and adjusts treatment if necessary.

NYU Langone offers several services that can help you manage a lipid disorder and prevent complications.

Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention

If you have a lipid disorder, specialists at NYU Langone can give you strategies for reducing your risk of developing heart disease or experiencing a stroke. Doctors at NYU Langone’s Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease also offer basic lipid testing, as well as testing for more advanced markers for cardiovascular risk.

Weight Management

If you have a lipid disorder that is exacerbated by obesity or excessive weight, losing weight can help lower your risk of cardiovascular disease. Specialists at NYU Langone’s Weight Management Program can create a plan appropriate for your health and lifestyle and offer advice on proper nutrition and exercise. They can also provide support throughout your weight loss efforts.

Nutritional Counseling

Adopting a healthy diet can improve your lipid profile. NYU Langone’s registered dietitians and nutritionists are available to help you create a diet plan tailored to your needs.

Tobacco Cessation

Cigarette smoking has been shown to increase the risk for high blood pressure, or hypertension. Many people have faced the frustration of trying to stop smoking. NYU Langone offers Tobacco Cessation Programs, which can help you quit for good.

Apheresis Referral

Despite aggressive treatment with statins and other medications, some people continue to have unhealthy levels of cholesterol. These people may be diagnosed as having drug-resistant hypercholesterolemia, or high cholesterol.

This sometimes occurs among people who have the condition familial hypercholesterolemia. For this group of people, a procedure called apheresis can help control lipid levels by “cleaning out” the cholesterol in the blood.

The procedure involves removing some of your blood and running it through a machine known as an adsorber column. The machine removes the LDL cholesterol and returns the treated blood to your body. Two catheters are placed in your arm: one that allows blood to enter the machine, and one that receives the treated blood.

Apheresis is very effective at lowering cholesterol levels, but only for a short while, because cholesterol rapidly reaccumulates. NYU Langone physicians can refer people with drug-resistant hypercholesterolemia to local centers where apheresis is performed.