[Correspondence] Refining the American guidelines for prevention of cardiovascular disease

The recent American Heart Association (AHA) and American College of Cardiology (ACC) guidelines recommend that more people are offered treatment to prevent heart attacks and strokes; they do this by lowering the risk cutoff from a 20% 10-year risk to 7·5% (the approximate risk of a person aged 60 years). Paul Ridker and Nancy Cook state that the risk calculator in the guidelines overestimates risk about two-fold. This variation, however, has little effect on discriminating between who will and will not have a heart attack or stroke (ie, on screening performance).

Source: LANCET - February 15, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Nicholas Wald, Joan Morris Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research