European Guidelines on CardioVascualar Disease

Exec summary - "European Guidelines on Cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention in clinical practice" - download pdf (from our server) or here Download a series of excellent slides (updated Dec 2003).

This new model for total risk estimation based on the SCORE (Systematic Coronary Risk Evaluation) system.

The SCORE risk assessment is derived from a large dataset of prospective European studies and predicts fatal atherosclerotic CVD events over a ten year period.

This risk estimation is based on the following risk factors: gender, age, smoking, systolic blood pressure and total cholesterol. The threshold for high risk based on fatal cardiovascular events is defined as "higher than 5%" , instead of the previous "higher than 20%" using a composite coronary endpoint.

Using HeartScore total CVD risk can also be projected to age 60 which may be of particular importance for guiding young adults, at the age of 20 or 30, at low absolute risk, but already with an unhealthy risk profile, which will put them at much higher risk when they grow older.

Relative risk can also be estimated from the pie charts. You can read more about the SCORE project in European Heart Journal, 2003, 24; 987-1003. source: European Society of Cardiology