Heart Health: A New Tool to Catch Women at Risk
Another new feature of the Reynolds calculator is that it allows women to project their risks up to 40 years in the future. "That's really important for a 40-year-old woman, for example, because typically we don't start seeing heart trouble until the mid-50s or later," Blumenthal says. "So if you just estimate risk at age 40 it doesn't look like there's any problem. But projecting it out to age 60 gives you and your patient a powerful tool." A woman can make changes to diet and exercise patterns in her 40s that might lower risk down the road. She might also consider medications. "And she should definitely quit smoking," Ridker says.
Levy, however, points out that the Framingham and Reynolds methods agree on risk levels 92 percent of the time. "So I think you can do a great job with both approaches," he says. He is also a bit skeptical of long-term risk predictions. "They are very tricky to do, because levels of risk factors can change over decades." Someone can stop smoking, for instance, or start eating in a way that drives cholesterol up or down. Nonetheless, he says, "the Brigham team's effort is to be applauded. Risk estimation is an ongoing process. We keep refining it to get better and better." And better estimates, for women, will mean healthier hearts.
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