### What you need to know
Practical Prescribing is a series produced in conjunction with the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin to highlight important issues for prescribers to consider and prompts for shared decision making between prescribers, patients, and their carers. Targeted at all medical and non-medical prescribers, particularly doctors in training, the series covers medicines commonly prescribed in primary and secondary care.
A 55 year old man without significant past medical history and who was not taking any regular medications has a transient ischaemic attack. His fasting lipid profile is total cholesterol 6.8 mmol/L (normal range <5 mmol/L), triglycerides 2.0 mmol/L (<1.7 mmol/L), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) 1.2 mmol/L (>1 mmol/L), low density lipoprotein cholesterol 4.6 mmol/L (<3.0 mmol/L), non-HDL-C 5.6 mmol/L (<4.0 mmol/L), and total-to-HDL cholesterol ratio 5.6 (<6). You are planning to discuss with the potential b