Wrap-Up: Opportunities to Improve Metabolic Syndrome With Your Patient

In this video, Michael Bloch, MD, provides a wrap-up of the session “Opportunities to Improve Metabolic Syndrome With Your Patient” during our Practical Updates in Primary Care 2023 Virtual Series, including the pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, motivational interviewing, and how to make the diagnosis. 

For more meeting coverage, visit the Practical Updates in Primary Care newsroom.

For more information about PUPC 2023 Virtual Series and to register for upcoming sessions, visit https://www.practicalupdates.consultant360.com/.

Michael J. Bloch, MD, is an associate professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, the medical director of vascular care at the Renown Institute for Heart and Vascular Health, and the President of Blue Spruce Medical Consultants, PLLC in Reno, NV.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Dr Michael Bloch: I hope you enjoy the sessions that Karlijn Burridge and I just recorded on metabolic syndrome and motivational interviewing. I think this was a really important session. Metabolic syndrome is a condition that affects probably at least a quarter, if not a third of the patients who come into our office on a daily basis. As I know you're aware, and as we went over this in this presentation, it's a constellation of conditions that may in and of themselves each not raise cardiovascular risk that much, but when taken in aggregate, cardiovascular risk increases dramatically. I went over some of the data from Finland, from observational studies that show that the presence of metabolic syndrome increases the risk of cardiovascular events and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. We talked a lot about the pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome. We talked about how to make the diagnosis. We talked a little bit about insulin resistance.

And then, I think, importantly, we talked about how to make the diagnosis. This is a diagnosis that is important to our patients. I find it a very useful construct for our patients in order to frame the discussion of how to approach not just the pharmacologic treatment, but the non-pharmacologic treatment of these cardiovascular risk factors. I spent a little bit of time talking about the pharmacologic treatment, but I think that's fairly well established.

And what I think was really nice about this session was when Karlijn Burridge came up and spoke to us about motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is a very useful communication strategy where patients and providers sort of go back and forth, and the key to it is really the provider listening to the patient, adjusting their recommendations based upon those personal preferences that that patient has. And Karlijn did a great job of going through some really nice examples that I think really spoke to the process of how to get patients to really make changes to their lifestyle in order to improve the parameters of the metabolic syndrome.

So, I hope you enjoyed the presentation. I hope you got a lot out of it. I hope you found it practical. If you have any comments, we'd love to hear them. Please send those comments in, and we look forward to future sessions on this very important topic. Thank you.