Sparked by a new study that once again finds serious flaws in the cardiovascular risk calculator at the heart of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association cardiovascular guidelines, Steve Nissen states that “the ACC and AHA should promptly revise the guidelines to address the criticisms offered by independent authorities.” The CV risk calculator is a key component of the guidelines, since people are generally considered candidates for statins if they have a 10-year estimated risk of CV disease of 7.5% or higher according to the equations used by the calculator.
In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, Nancy Cook and Paul Ridker, analyzing data from the Women’s Health Study, offer fresh evidence that the cardiovascular risk calculator used in the ACC/AHA cholesterol guideline is flawed. They found that the predicted rate of cardiovascular disease using the guideline calculator was significantly higher than the actual observed rate in the trial. They considered and ruled out several “alternative explanations” for the discrepancy, including underascertainment of events and the increased use of statins and revascularization procedures in their population.
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