General Cardiovascular Disease 10-Year Risk Prediction for 30-74-year-olds

These tables allow you to estimate your odds of having a cardiovascular disease (CVD) event over the next ten years. Higher risk requires more intensive treatments of the major CVD risk factors: cholesterol problems, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, overweight and lack of exercise.

What is a CVD event? The answer is any of the following: coronary death (a heart attack that is fatal), a non-fatal myocardial infarction (heart attack), coronary insufficiency (acute formation of a clot in a coronary artery that will cause a heart attack if angioplasty or by-pass surgery isnít undertaken immediately; also called acute coronary syndrome), angina (stable, recurring chest pain caused by accumulation of cholesterol plaque in a coronary artery wall), stroke (fatal or nonfatal), transient ischemic attack or TIA (a temporary episode of weakness or numbness caused by a clot temporarily blocking an artery supplying blood to the brain), peripheral artery disease (narrowing of the arteries supplying blood to the legs), heart failure.

1. To calculate your 10-year risk you need to know about your CVD risk factors:
• Age
• Diabetes
• Smoking
• Systolic Blood Pressure (the higher of the two blood pressure numbers) and if you are treated with a medicine to lower blood pressure
• Total cholesterol
• HDL cholesterol


2. Use the CVD Points tables for MEN or for WOMEN below and see how many points you get for each item in the table. Be sure to use the correct table for your gender. For example if you are a 47 year old man you are assessed 6 points; for this man if he takes a medicine for blood pressure and his blood pressure is 145/79 look in the “SBP Treated” column and you'll see that 4 points are assessed for a systolic BP of 145.


3. Add up all of the points and look in the middle table, CVD Risk Over Next 10 Years, for MEN or for WOMEN to learn the 10-year risk that corresponds to your point total. If a man has a point total of 13, then the 10-year risk is 15.6% (out of 100 men with this score 15 or 16 will have a CVD event within 10-years).


4. What's high risk?
1. highest risk is a 10-year risk that is 20% or greater
2. moderate risk is a 10-year risk of 6 to 19%
3. low risk is a 10-year risk of less than 6%


5. Age has the biggest impact on risk. Few points are assessed for age in young adults. If you are below age 40 recalculate your risk using an age of 60 years to see what your 10-year risk will be at age 60 if the values of all of your other risk factors (total cholesterol, etc.) don't change as you grow older. If your risk will be high at age 60 the time to start doing something about the risk factors is when you are a young adult.


6. The last of the three tables, Heart Age/Vascular Age for MEN or for WOMEN, allows you to estimate the age of your arteries based on your point total. A man with a point total of 13 has arteries that are equivalent to those of the average 64 year old man. If you have a score of 13 points and you are 51 years old you have the arteries of a 64 year old man!

 
Estimate of Risk of CVD in MEN