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Predictive ability of the SCORE Belgium risk chart for cardiovascular mortality

Dirk De Bacquer1, Guy De Backer

  • 1Department of Public Health, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium. dirk.debacquer@ugent.be

International Journal of Cardiology
|April 24, 2009
PubMed

Insights

The new SCORE Belgium risk chart accurately predicts 10-year cardiovascular disease deaths in Belgium. This tool enhances cardiovascular risk assessment for prevention efforts.

Area of Science:

  • Cardiology
  • Public Health
  • Epidemiology

Background:

  • Accurate cardiovascular risk assessment is crucial for effective prevention strategies.
  • The Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) tool aids in identifying high-risk individuals.
  • Adapting risk charts to national data improves prediction accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop and validate a calibrated SCORE risk chart for Belgium.
  • To assess the predictive accuracy of the SCORE Belgium risk chart for fatal cardiovascular events.
  • To evaluate the chart's suitability for cardiovascular risk estimation in the Belgian population.

Main Methods:

  • Validated the SCORE Belgium risk chart using a prospective cohort of 6212 non-diabetic individuals.
  • Assessed agreement between predicted and observed cardiovascular deaths using statistical tests (chi-square, Hosmer-Lemeshow).
  • Evaluated discriminatory power using Harrell's c-statistic and ROC analysis.

Main Results:

  • The SCORE Belgium chart predicted 263 cardiovascular deaths, closely matching the 274 observed events over 10 years.
  • Demonstrated very good accuracy across the risk spectrum (Hosmer-Lemeshow P=0.14).
  • Achieved excellent discriminatory power with a c-statistic of 0.86, identifying future fatal cardiovascular disease cases effectively.

Conclusions:

  • The SCORE Belgium risk chart is a well-suited tool for accurate and precise cardiovascular risk assessment in Belgium.
  • The chart's performance supports its use in clinical practice for cardiovascular prevention.
  • Validation confirms the chart's reliability for estimating 10-year fatal cardiovascular event probability.
Abstract

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