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Cardiovascular
ROCHESTER, Minnesota — A recent study based on real-world community patient data validates the Pooled Cohort Equation (PCE), developed by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology in 2013. The PCE estimates the 10-year risk of developing clogged arteries, also known as atherosclerosis, and is used to guide heart attack and stroke prevention efforts. The study findings are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
This new study highlights to patients and clinicians the continued reliability and validity of PCE as a tool to assess cardiovascular risk, regardless of statin use to lower cholesterol.
The PCE serves as a collaborative decision-making tool for clinicians and patients to assess their current status in preventing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The calculator considers inputs in the following categories: sex, age, race, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, hypertension treatment, diabetes status, and smoking status.
“We have seen the excellent performance of the pooled-cohort equation in clinical practice for many years,” said Francisco Lopez Jimenez, MD, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic and senior author of the study. “This study shows that this tool is reliable not only for taking into account new cholesterol-lowering medications, but also for patients who previously were not evaluated with PCE because their blood pressure was higher or lower than the standard or they did not fit the age profile. By including patients with values outside the acceptable range, we believe we can calculate the heart attack risk for an additional 20% to 25% of patients, which is by no means a small number.”
Watch: Dr. Francisco Lopez Jimenez and Dr. José Medina Hinojosa discuss their research into assessment tools
Note to journalists: Soundbites are available for download at the end of the post. Courtesy of “Mayo Clinic News Network.” Super/CG name: Francisco Lopez Jimenez, Doctor of Medicine/Cardiology/Mayo Clinic and Jose Medina-Inojosa, MD/Epidemiology/Mayo Clinic;
Lifestyle modification is fundamentally central to cardiovascular disease prevention, and clinicians discuss with patients what to focus on to prevent the serious consequences of heart attack and stroke.
“Going beyond health questions about exercise, diet, stress levels and enough sleep, the PCE guides the conversation to determine whether it’s time to start treatment for high cholesterol or high blood pressure. With this study, we wanted to provide confidence that the pooled cohort equation still performs well at the community level, and our data bears that out,” said José Medina Hinojosa, MD, a research scientist at Mayo Clinic and lead author of the study.
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