“The main problem with most current equations is that they are based on old cohort studies that were conducted when CVD risk was much higher,” senior investigator Rod Jackson, PhD (University of Auckland, New Zealand), told TCTMD in an email. Overall, the ACC/AHA pooled cohort equation overestimated the incidence of atherosclerotic CVD events in New Zealand primary-prevention patients by approximately 40% in men and 60% of women. A new calculator for cardiovascular risk prediction developed from a large cohort of primary care patients in New Zealand suggests that risk equations based on earlier cohorts-now decades old-may substantially overestimate patient risk, a new study shows.Ĭompared with the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) pooled cohort equation to calculate CVD risk, the New Zealand risk-prediction equation “performed better in predicting total cardiovascular disease events than the pooled cohort equations performed in predicting hard atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease events,” according to a study published online May 4, 2018, in the Lancet.
