At the heart of celebrations

BEFORE you tuck into your favourite goodies during the upcoming festive period, you may want to know your risk of getting a heart attack or stroke. With an increased emphasis on preventive approaches to heart disease, physicians are being encouraged to use risk scoring systems (also termed global risk assessment) in an attempt to categorise patients into various risk levels for heart attack.

Global risk assessment of heart artery disease is a calculation of the risk of having a heart attack over a determined period. If you are told by your physician that you have a 20 per cent risk of a heart attack over the next 10 years, does it really mean that you have a one-in-five chance of getting a heart attack within the next 10 years if you do not change your lifestyle? According to the 2013 American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association Guideline on Assessment of Cardiovascular Risk, no one has 10 per cent or 20 per cent risk of a heart attack during a 10-year period.

What a 20 per cent 10-year risk means is that within a group of individuals with the same risk profile, for every 100 individuals , there will be 20 individuals who will develop a heart attack within the 10-year period. Only those who are predestined to have a heart attack will be able to have the heart attack event prevented by preventive measures. Hence, the scoring system serves mainly as a wake-up call to those with multiple risk factors.