Age of Your Heart May Surprise You: Correlation Between Heart Age and Disease Risk REVEALED!
New Tool Helps Assess Heart Disease Risk: The PREVENT Risk Age Calculator
A groundbreaking new tool, the PREVENT Risk Age Calculator, has been developed by the American Heart Association and researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. This free online resource aims to help doctors and patients discuss heart disease risk more effectively and ensure the right therapies to prevent heart attacks, stroke, or heart failure events.
The calculator estimates a person's "heart age" or "risk age," which reflects the risk level of cardiovascular events relative to an optimal-risk individual of the same predicted risk. It takes into account key health factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking status, current medications, body mass index (BMI), diabetes presence, and optional factors like urine albumin-creatinine ratio, hemoglobin A1c, and social deprivation index.
The calculator provides separate risk estimates for total cardiovascular disease, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and heart failure over 10 and 30 years. The main benefit of the PREVENT Risk Age Calculator is that it presents risk in an easily understandable format: a heart age that may be older or younger than the actual chronological age. This makes it easier to grasp the urgency of preventive measures and improve motivation for lifestyle changes and adherence to therapies.
Heart disease has been the leading cause of death in the U.S. for over 100 years, and the gap between heart age and chronological age is wider among men, Black and Hispanic people, those with lower education and income, and women. On average, women have a heart age of 55.4, nearly four years higher than their average chronological age of 51.3.
The PREVENT Risk Age Calculator was tested on over 14,100 American adults with no history of heart disease, ranging in age from 30 to 79. The findings of the study were published in JAMA Cardiology on Wednesday. However, it's important to note that the calculator is not intended to replace in-person assessments by a physician.
One limitation of the study is that the definition of optimal risk may influence the calculation of PREVENT risk age. Furthermore, the data for the adults was obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which was gathered from 2011 to March 2020. Future studies are needed to measure the impact of heart age on healthy lifestyle changes, preventive therapies, and patient outcomes.
Dr. Sadiya Khan, the Magerstadt professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, led the development of the PREVENT equations. She stated that heart age may be particularly useful for patients and clinicians in preventing heart disease. Population-based percentiles of risk can provide a complementary approach to communicating risk, but these are influenced by suboptimal population health.
Many people who should be on medications to lower their risk for heart attack, stroke, or heart failure are not on these medications, according to the preventive cardiologist. The calculator needs to be tested widely to determine if it is more readily understood, and researchers hope it will encourage earlier and better management of heart disease risk.
- The PREVENT Risk Age Calculator, a new tool developed by the American Heart Association and Northwestern University, aims to assist doctors and patients in discussing heart disease risk more effectively.
- This free online resource calculates a person's 'heart age' or 'risk age,' taking into account factors like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking status, diabetes presence, BMI, and optional medical-conditions.
- The calculator provides separate estimates for total cardiovascular disease, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and heart failure risks over 10 and 30 years.
- In the press release, it was highlighted that the calculator's Key benefit lies in its easy-to-understand format, as it presents risk in terms of a 'heart age' that may differ from the actual chronological age.
- According to the study published in JAMA Cardiology, on average, women have a heart age of 55.4, four years higher than their average chronological age of 51.3.
- Researchers aim to measure the impact of heart age on healthy lifestyle changes, preventive therapies, and patient outcomes through future studies in the health-and-wellness field, addressing issues like nutrition, mental-health, fitness-and-exercise, and chronic-diseases.
