Lifetime Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: The Next Generation in Risk Prediction

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Amid mounting concern that younger individuals are inadequately served by short-term risk prediction, the assessment of lifetime risk of a cardiovascular event is gaining credence. The majority of US adults (82%) are at low short-term risk of a cardiovascular event,1 with almost all young individuals and women classified as low risk by current algorithms,2 in part because models such as Framingham weight excessively for age and sex (Table 1).3 This is misleading, as more than half of all cardiovascular events will occur in those labelled with a low or intermediate 10-year risk score (Fig.