Cardiovascular risk prediction and prevention

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Most guidelines suggest a baseline risk assessment to guide atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) prevention strategies. The American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Pooled Cohort Equations (PCEs) is one tool to assess baseline risk; however, the accuracy of this tool has been called into question. We aimed to examine the calibration and discrimination of the PCEs in the BioImage study, a contemporary multiethnic cohort of asymptomatic adults enrolled from 2008 to 2009 in the Humana Health System in Chicago, Illinois, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida...

This review evaluates the cost-effectiveness of using coronary artery calcium (CAC) to guide long-term statin therapy compared with treating all patients eligible for statins according to 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association cholesterol management guidelines for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The authors used a microsimulation model to compare costs and effectiveness from a societal perspective over a lifetime horizon. Both strategies resulted in similar costs and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)...

BACKGROUND: Policies of active case finding for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention in healthy adults are common, but economic evaluation has not investigated targeting such strategies at those who are most likely to benefit. AIM: To assess the cost effectiveness of targeted case finding for CVD prevention. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cost-effectiveness modelling in an English primary care population. METHOD: A cohort of 10 000 individuals aged 30-74 years and without existing CVD or diabetes was sampled from The Health Improvement Network database, a large primary care database...

The Million Hearts Initiative has a goal of preventing 1 million heart attacks and strokes-the leading causes of mortality-through several public health and healthcare strategies by 2017. The American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology support the program. The Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Model was developed by Million Hearts and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services as a strategy to assess a value-based payment approach toward reduction in 10-year predicted risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) by implementing cardiovascular preventive strategies to manage the "ABCS" (aspirin therapy in appropriate patients, blood pressure control, cholesterol management, and smoking cessation)...

BACKGROUND: Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability; worldwide it is estimated that 16.9 million people have a first stroke each year. Lipid-lowering, anticoagulant, and antihypertensive drugs can prevent strokes, but may be underused. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We analysed anonymised electronic primary care records from a United Kingdom (UK) primary care database that covers approximately 6% of the UK population. Patients with first-ever stroke/transient ischaemic attack (TIA), ≥18 y, with diagnosis between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2013, were included...

BACKGROUND: Fibrates are effective for modifying atherogenic dyslipidaemia, and particularly for lowering serum triglycerides. However, evidence that fibrates reduce mortality and morbidity associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), or overall mortality and morbidity, in the primary prevention of CVD is lacking. OBJECTIVES: This Cochrane Review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the clinical benefits and harms of fibrates versus placebo or usual care or fibrates plus other lipid-modifying drugs versus other lipid-modifying drugs alone for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality...

INTRODUCTION: Risk scoring is an integral part of the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and should form the basis for the decision to offer medication to reduce cholesterol (statins). However, there is a suggestion in the literature that many patients are still initiated on statins based on raised cholesterol rather than a raised CVD risk. It is important, therefore, to investigate the role that lipid levels and CVD risks have in the decision to prescribe. This research will establish how cholesterol levels and CVD risk independently influence the prescribing of statins for the primary prevention of CVD in primary care...

OBJECTIVES: Estimate the effect of statin prescription on mortality in the population of England and Wales with no previous history of cardiovascular disease. METHODS: Primary care records from The Health Improvement Network 1987-2011 were used. Four cohorts of participants aged 60, 65, 70, or 75 years at baseline included 118,700, 199,574, 247,149, and 194,085 participants; and 1.4, 1.9, 1.8, and 1.1 million person-years of data, respectively. The exposure was any statin prescription at any time before the participant reached the baseline age (60, 65, 70 or 75) and the outcome was all-cause mortality at any age above the baseline age...

BACKGROUND: With multiple cholesterol guidelines, we evaluated the accuracy of recommended statin therapy on identifying coronary artery calcium (CAC) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events by 2004 NCEP/ ATP III, 2016 ESC/EAS, and 2013 ACC/AHA guidelines. HYPOTHESIS: ACC/AHA guidelines are more accurate in identifying persons at risk for CVD. METHODS: 5002/6814 participants age <75 years and free of CVD were included. CAC categories (>0, ≥100, and ≥300) and 10 years of CVD outcomes were considered...

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are responsible for significant morbidity, premature mortality, and economic burden. Despite established evidence that supports the use of preventive medications among patients at high CVD risk, treatment gaps remain. Building on prior evidence and a theoretical framework, a complex intervention has been designed to address these gaps among high-risk, under-treated patients in the Australian primary care setting. This intervention comprises a general practice quality improvement tool incorporating clinical decision support and audit/feedback capabilities; availability of a range of CVD polypills (fixed-dose combinations of two blood pressure lowering agents, a statin ± aspirin) for prescription when appropriate; and access to a pharmacy-based program to support long-term medication adherence and lifestyle modification...

BACKGROUND: Statins are widely prescribed for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Guidelines exist for statin prescriptions, but there is little recent analysis concerning prescription trends over time and how these vary with respect to demographic variables. METHODS AND RESULTS: Using The Health Improvement Network primary care database, statin therapy initiation and statin prescription prevalence rates were calculated using data from 7,027,711 individuals across the UK for the years 1995 to 2013, overall and stratified by sex, age group, and socioeconomic deprivation level (Townsend score)...

BACKGROUND: In this study, we aimed to translate the average relative effect of statin therapy from trial data to the individual patient with type 2 diabetes mellitus by developing and validating a model to predict individualized absolute risk reductions (ARR) of cardiovascular events. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data of 2725 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus from the Lipid Lowering Arm of the Anglo Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial (ASCOT-LLA) study (atorvastatin 10 mg versus placebo) were used for model derivation...

BACKGROUND: The associations of optimal levels of all major cardiovascular disease risk factors, that is, low risk, in younger age with subsequent cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality have been well documented. However, little is known about associations of low-risk profiles in younger age with functional disability in older age. METHODS AND RESULTS: The sample included 6014 participants from the Chicago Heart Association Detection Project in Industry Study...

Sedentary behavior is an emerging risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and may be particularly relevant to the cardiovascular health of older adults. This scoping review describes the existing literature examining the prevalence of sedentary time in older adults with CVD and the association of sedentary behavior with cardiovascular risk in older adults. We found that older adults with CVD spend >75 % of their waking day sedentary, and that sedentary time is higher among older adults with CVD than among older adults without CVD...

BACKGROUND: The predictive performance of static risk prediction models such as EuroSCORE deteriorates over time. We aimed to explore different methods for continuous updating of EuroSCORE (dynamic modeling) to improve risk prediction. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data on adult cardiac surgery from 2007 to 2012 (n=95 240) were extracted from the Netherlands Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery database. The logistic EuroSCORE predicting in-hospital death was updated using 6 methods: recalibrating the intercept of the logistic regression model; recalibrating the intercept and joint effects of the prognostic factors; re-estimating all prognostic factor effects, re-estimating all prognostic factor effects, and applying shrinkage of the estimates; applying a test procedure to select either of these; and a Bayesian learning strategy...

BACKGROUND: The American Heart Association's 2020 Strategic Goals emphasize the value of optimizing risk factor status to reduce the burden of morbidity and mortality. In this study, we aimed to quantify the overall and marginal impact of favorable cardiovascular risk factor (CRF) profile on healthcare expenditure and resource utilization in the United States among those with and without cardiovascular disease (CVD). METHODS AND RESULTS: The study population was derived from the 2012 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)...

Despite the efficacy of statins in reducing cardiovascular events in both primary and secondary prevention, the adherence to statin therapy is not optimal, mainly due to the occurrence of muscular adverse effects. Several risk factors may concur to the development of statin-induced myotoxicity, including patient-related factors (age, sex, and race), statin properties (dose, lipophilicity, and type of metabolism), and the concomitant administration of other drugs. Thus, the management of patients intolerant to statins, particularly those at high or very high cardiovascular risk, involves alternative therapies, including the switch to another statin or the use of intermittent dosage statin regimens, as well as nonstatin lipid lowering drugs (ezetimibe and fibrates) or new hypolipidemic drugs such as PCSK9 monoclonal antibodies, the antisense oligonucleotide against the coding region of human apolipoprotein B mRNA (mipomersen), and microsomal triglyceride transfer protein inhibitor lomitapide...

Low birth weight serves as a crude proxy for impaired growth during fetal life and indicates a failure for the fetus to achieve its full growth potential. Low birth weight can occur in response to numerous etiologies that include complications during pregnancy, poor prenatal care, parental smoking, maternal alcohol consumption, or stress. Numerous epidemiological and experimental studies demonstrate that birth weight is inversely associated with blood pressure and coronary heart disease. Sex and age impact the developmental programming of hypertension...

Diabetic foot ulcerations have been extensively reported as vascular complications of diabetes mellitus associated with a high degree of morbidity and mortality; in fact, some authors showed a higher prevalence of major, previous and new-onset, cardiovascular, and cerebrovascular events in diabetic patients with foot ulcers than in those without these complications. This is consistent with the fact that in diabetes there is a complex interplay of several variables with inflammatory metabolic disorders and their effect on the cardiovascular system that could explain previous reports of high morbidity and mortality rates in diabetic patients with amputations...