"Because of your high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and smoking, you have the cardiovascular system of a 68 year old man. Let me know if you want address this."

New Framingham CVD risk profile for primary care
JANUARY 23, 2008

Boston, MA - Framingham Heart Study researchers have developed a new sex-specific general cardiovascular disease prediction tool that they hope will encourage primary-care physicians to make greater use of such algorithms [1]. Dr Ralph B D'Agostino (Framingham Heart Study, Boston, MA) and colleagues report their findings online January 22, 2008 in Circulation.

They explain that the despite the availability of several validated disease-specific risk-prediction algorithms—such as the current Framingham risk score, which predicts risk of coronary heart disease only—their use has lagged in primary care. "We believe physicians want to know how to prevent all cardiovascular diseases. They don't like to look at a patient and say, for you I'm going to prevent coronary disease, for you stroke, etc, etc," senior author Dr William B Kannel (Framingham Heart Study) explained.

Heart Age, based on the well-established and highly respected Framingham Risk Score, uses standard risk factors for heart disease or stroke (such as age, weight, gender, cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking) to estimate a person’s ‘Heart Age’, which could be higher than their chronological age if their personal CVD risk factors are high.


From the developer of STAT Cholesterol (StatCoder.com).