ABSTRACT
Introduction In the beginning there was only opinion, usually strongly held. Then there was evidence, and after evidence came guidelines. And the medical profession were divided: some regarded guidelines as a good thing created by experts in their field who spent long hours sifting through the results of clinical trials in order to help the rest of us make evidence-based treatment decisions, while others considered guidelines a straitjacket or worse, a form of cookbook medicine designed primarily to curtail clinical freedom. Those for and those against guidelines are unlikely ever to be completely reconciled, but even the hardened sceptic would probably concede that guidelines in general, and lipid guidelines in particular, are now coming of age.
