High cholesterol is one of the leading risk factors for cardiovascular disease, as evidenced by multiple epidemiological and intervention studies that have shown a near-linear relationship between this dyslipidemia, morbidity, and cardiovascular mortality.

After the forced break due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, it is appropriate to return to discussing “non-communicable chronic diseases” whose health risks have continued to accumulate in the last 3 years.

The conference aims to bring attention to the diagnosis and management of hypercholesterolemia in light of the latest guidelines produced by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS).

Innovative topics such as environmental risk factors, including smoking and their role in the progression of atherosclerosis, will be addressed. Diagnostic ultrasound for patients with hypercholesterolemia (with a particular focus on carotid Doppler) and innovative pharmacological approaches that include PCSK9 inhibitors and bempedoic acid, drugs that have made new intervention possibilities possible in patients at high and very high cardiovascular risk, will be discussed. Hypercholesterolemia familial, a hereditary disease in which a genetic alteration causes extremely high levels of LDL cholesterol that correlate with the high risk of cardiac events in carriers, will also be discussed.

The final session proposes non-pharmacological suggestions for the management of cardiovascular risk, including lifestyle, physical activity, nutraceuticals, and nutrition, and in particular, the Mediterranean diet as a lifestyle that originates in our territory that should be adopted and exported, physical activity that brings us back in contact with the environment and also has an ecological meaning, and the potential role of nutraceuticals.