Legacy benefits of blood glucose, blood pressure and lipid control in individuals with diabetes and cardiovascular disease: Time to overcome multifactorial therapeutic inertia?

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally and the largest contributor to healthcare costs. There is good evidence that management of risk factors such as blood pressure, dyslipidaemia and glucose can lead to improved microvascular and macrovascular complications in individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Legacy effect is a phenomenon used to describe the prolonged benefits of glucose, blood pressure or lipid control in individuals with cardiovascular disease, diabetes or in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease by early risk factor control. There is now also good quality evidence on the legacy benefits of multifactorial risk factor interventions on renal, cardiovascular and mortality outcomes. Despite this robust evidence, therapeutic inertia is widespread in the management of these risk factors in clinical practice.