Dear Editor

Smellie et al, in their article Best Practice in Primary Care Pathology: Review 3(1) cite our article published in the BMJ in 1994.(2)

Unfortunately they state that this was a study of “people referred from primary care to a hospital lipid clinic” and it wasn’t. Our study was, on the contrary, a review of computerised medical records of a group of patients with hyperlipidaemia in one general practice which alone had the 1542 tests described.

The vast majority of people with raised lipids in the United Kingdom are not referred to hospital lipid clinics and the key clinical issue is how they should be best managed and treated in general practice.

Yours faithfully

Philip Evans, Denis Pereira Gray

References

(1) Smellie WSA, Forth J, Bareford D, Twomey P, Galloway MJ, Logan ECM et al. Best practice in primary care pathology: review 3. J Clin Pathol 2006; 59(8):781-789.

(2) Evans P, Pereira Gray DJ. Value of screening for secondary causes of hyperlipidaemia in general practice. British Medical Journal 1994; 309:509-510.