New Risk Score Tool More Accurately Predicts Patients' Risk for Cardiac Disease, Death

Researchers from the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center, Murray, UT, have developed the Intermountain Risk Score, a measurement tool that looks at age and sex, but also adds the results of routine blood tests, which are not included in the Framingham Risk Score -- currently the gold standard for measuring future coronary heart disease risk.

"Framingham does a good job of classifying groups of patients," said Benjamin Horne, PhD, Cardiovascular and Genetic Epidemiology. "But it's not as good at indentifying an individual's risk for disease."

"Our research has shown that the Intermountain Risk Score really improves a doctor's ability to measure patient risk. And it does it by including two simple and inexpensive tests: the complete blood count and metabolic profiles," said Dr. Horne.

Researchers followed over 5,000 patients who were treated for angiography, or vascular imaging. By combining the patients' Framingham Risk Score with their Intermountain Risk Score, researchers found that they were 30% more likely to correctly determine a woman's risk, and 57% more likely to determine a man's risk for a cardiovascular problem or death within 30 days of the angiography.

The results remained substantially better than the Framingham score alone after 1 year (23% for women and 46% for men) and at 5 years (29% for women and 25% for men).

"Adding the Intermountain Risk Score to the Framingham Risk Score substantially improves our ability to determine an individual's risk of future coronary heart disease and associated problems," said Dr. Horne.

Researchers at Intermountain Medical Center followed patients an average of 3 years after their angiogram, and some were followed for up to 10 years.

"We are in the process of replicating these findings at an academic center in North Carolina," said Dr. Horne. "Our previous studies of the Intermountain Risk Score showed that it applies very well both to patients and to the general population in different geographic settings, so we expect it will improve on the Framingham Risk Score in that East Coast population as well. We are also evaluating which health conditions are best predicted by the Intermountain Risk Score, and how changes over time in laboratory values influence the scoring system's ability to predict health outcomes."

Presented at the 59th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology (ACC).