British Heart Foundation Urges People To Have Regular Heart Health Checks

Main Category: Heart Disease
Also Included In: Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Article Date: 08 Jul 2009 - 1:00 PDT

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In response to a study published online in the BMJ, comparing the performance of two cardiovascular risk assessment tools, British Heart Foundation (BHF) Medical Director, Professor Peter Weissberg, said:

"The comparison made here between QRISK and the Framingham risk assessment tool shows that QRISK performs better in the UK population. This suggests that in the future we should be using QRISK as the model for assessing a person's cardiovascular risk.

"However, perhaps the most telling finding in the report was the indication that only a very small percentage of the UK population have undergone any formal risk assessment. Rather than agonise over which assessment tool is best, we should be urging people to visit their GP and have a heart health check."

- Issued in response to 'An independent external validation and evaluation of QRISK cardiovascular risk prediction: a prospective open cohort study', Gary S Collins, Douglas G Altman. Published online in the BMJ, BMJ 2009;339:b2584. doi:10.1136/bmj.b2584

Source
British Heart Foundation

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