Cardiovascular absolute risk assessment -- a research journey in general practice

General practitioners are asked to implement new tools or approaches often without attention being paid to whether these are acceptable, feasible and effective in the primary care context. Cardiovascular absolute risk (CVAR) assessment is recommended in clinical practice guidelines and assessment tools have been disseminated. It combines multiple risk factors to estimate the probability that an individual will develop cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a given period of time. Australian guidelines state that 'it is reasonable to expect that a CVD prevention strategy based on estimated absolute risk will be more effective and enable more efficient use of resources, than the traditional clinical management approach based on identifying and correcting individual risk factors through the application of several separate guidelines'.