A New Tool for Calculating Heart Disease Risk

People generally understand the steps they need to take to preserve their heart health. Eat a healthy diet, maintain a healthy weight, exercise regularly, and keep your blood pressure and cholesterol under control are just a handful of the highly touted strategies.

But now, people can measure their personal risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart disease with the release of the American Heart Association’s PREVENT Online Calculator.

The way the AHA tool works is fairly simple.

You access it online and enter a few fields like your sex, age, smoking status, medication usage and more. You’ll also need a few readings from a recent doctor’s visit, such as your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and BMI.

Once you fill in all the fields, you can select if you want to determine your risk of cardiovascular disease (or heart disease), atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (a disease caused by a buildup of plaque in the arteries) or heart failure. When you click “Calculate,” the tool determines your risk of developing the selected disease with an estimate ranging from low to high risk. The calculator provides 10-year risk estimates for people ages 30 to 79 and 30-year risk estimates for those ages 30 to 59.

The value of PREVENT

Andrew Bromley, M.D., a cardiologist with the University of Miami Health System, says, “I regularly use it in patients in whom I am assessing their cardiovascular risk,” he says. “I particularly find it helpful in younger patients, especially less than 40 years of age. I regularly see patients in their 30s and 40s who may have significant family history of cardiovascular disease or risk factors of their own and are eager to work on the prevention of cardiovascular disease.”

The calculator also offers several advantages over the model doctors previously used to determine cardiovascular disease risk, known as the Pooled Cohort Equation (PCE). According to the American Heart Association, one of the most significant advantages of the PREVENT calculator over the PCE is the ability to assess 30-year risk in younger patients. The PCE could only provide a 10-year risk, which was typically always lower in younger patients.

“Forecasting one’s 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease at a younger age is often limited, given the lower risk of CV disease,” says Dr. Bromley. “The PREVENT calculator, on the other hand, seeks to overcome this limitation by offering an estimation of one’s 30-year risk of cardiovascular disease in people between the ages of 30 and 59. This is particularly helpful in that the 30-year risk of disease may be higher and enough to warrant consideration of more aggressive forms of risk reduction.”

The new calculator factors in tobacco use, blood sugar, and kidney function measurements, as well as removing inaccurate disparities based on a person’s race.

Assess your own heart health.

The most valuable aspect of the PREVENT Online Calculator, however, is that it is no longer a tool just for doctors. Anyone can access it online to assess their risk.

“By plugging in a few key data points, patients can obtain quick an estimation of their own risk for cardiovascular disease,” says Dr. Bromley. “For clarification and a nuanced discussion of risk beyond that estimated by a risk calculator, as well as for consideration of risk-reduction strategies, I’d recommend seeking out a physician interested in the prevention of cardiovascular disease who can help you to achieve your goals.”

Wyatt Myers is a contributor to UHealth’s news service.

Tags: cardiology care in Miami, cardiovascular care, Dr. Andrew Bromley, heart risk