The calculation method heart risk commonly used by specialists would tend to overestimate the real risk, leading doctors to prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs unnecessarily called statins. In any case, this is explained by a new report by American experts, published in the journal of the American college of cardiology.
“This overestimation is about 5 to 6 times higher” says Dr. Alan Go, lead author of the study. “Which means that these are as many people being treated with statins when they do not need them”.
Calculations that do not apply to the entire population
This calculation method (published in 2013) is based on an equation which took into account the risks of several groups of volunteers followed in the 90s. But, according to Dr. Go’s team, ethnic diversity and age groups of these volunteers were limited, so the calculations do not apply to the population as a whole.
“The data on which the model was built came from the 1990s, when treatments for heart disease and knowledge risk factors were less advanced than they are today “ Dr. Go points out. This is how the researchers found that the actual incidence of heart disease “in real life” was ultimately lower than the risk predicted by computational methods.
A precise calculation method especially for diabetics
Experts believe that different algorithms might be needed to calculate the risk of different groups of people, with different weighting based on age, cholesterol or blood pressure. The current calculation method, which is identical for all population categories, is for example precise enough to predict the risk of cardiac events in people with diabetes, but it is much less for non-diabetics.
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