Risk of Cardiovascular Events Using the SMART Polyvascular Disease Risk Score

Secondary Manifestations of Arterial Disease (SMART) risk score-based projection of risk for cardiovascular (CV) events can help devise risk mitigation strategies.

The objective of the study was to analyze the use of the SMART polyvascular disease score to compute the risk for major adverse CV events (MACE) in U.S.

We accessed the Baylor Scott & White EPIC informatics and data warehouse to identify patients at their first outpatient cardiology evaluation between April 2014 and October 2023 to estimate up to 10-year risk of MACE, a composite of all-cause death, ischemic stroke, and nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI). Cox regression, accelerated failure time model, and survival analyses were used to develop and validate the SMART risk score.

The study population of 259,250 patients (mean age 60.9 ± 15.2 years, 48.6% females) were divided into development (60%) and test (40%) cohorts; median follow-up 2.1 years (IQR: 0.54-4.4). The SMART risk score allowed accurate estimation of MACE. Patients in low (<10%), moderate (10%-<20%), high (20%-<30%), and very high (≥30%) SMART risk score groups had observed MACE events rates of 2.9%, 15.0%, 24.5%, and 56.5%, respectively, in the test cohort (P < 0.0001 for all intergroup comparisons). Most MACE events were all-cause death, with nonfatal myocardial infarction and stroke also being high, in the very high-risk group. The SMART score outperformed an established risk prediction model (TIMI Risk Score for Secondary Prevention [TRS2°P]; C-statistic = 0.811) in the test cohort.

The SMART polyvascular disease risk score can provide accurate estimation of up to 10-year risk of CV events and could be potentially leveraged to develop individualized risk mitigation strategies.