Estimating Your Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke: There's an App For That

I’ve been meaning to blog on the new ACC/AHA (ACC=American College of Cardiology, AHA=American Heart Association) guidelines for treatment of high cholesterol but have been waiting for the initial controversy to die down and to get more experience with using them.  One of the areas of controversy has been the ASCVD (atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease) risk estimator. These guidelines attempt to look at risk of both stroke and heart attack (the components of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease) and what published scientific research tells us works to reduce that risk.

They differ substantially from previous guidelines recommendations and suggest treatment with statin drugs(no other cholesterol lowering agents) for the following groups

1. Diabetics

2. Patients with known clinical ASCVD  (this includes stroke/TIA, heart attack, and peripheral arterial disease)

3. LDL or bad cholesterol over 190

4. Individuals without ASCVD whose 10 year risk of developing ASCVD (heart attack or stroke) is > 7.5%

It is the last category that has garnered the most controversy as it appears this will substantially increase the number of patients in whom statin therapy is recommended. In addition, the accuracy of the risk estimator has been questioned. When the guidelines were released the risk estimator was available as a downloadable Excel spreadsheet which was very cumbersome to use (and did not work on my Mac).

Today, the ACC announced that  an iphone/ipad app version of the risk estimator was available on itunes . You can download it for free here. (The app is now called ASCVD Plus) It’s pretty well done. You enter your age, race, gender, HDL (“good” cholesterol) and total cholesterol along with yes/no answers to whether you have diabetes, treatment for hypertension or are a smoker.

Your 10 year risk of ASCVD appears as a percentage.

In the example to the left, the individual (whose numbers are eerily similar to those of the skeptical cardiologist) has a 10 year risk of 6.2% compared to 5.2% for an individual with “ideal” risk factors. In this case, the 6.2% 10 year risk is below the proposed 7.5% cut point for treatment. (As a side note, this individual’s HDL rose from 53 to 80 when he switched from skim milk , egg-whites and low-fat processed food to full fat dairy, eggs and grass-fed beef. An HDL of 53 would raise the risk to 8.5% which would trigger a recommendation for statin therapy!)

A lifetime risk is also given for those aged 20 to 59 years but the app seems flawed because in every case I entered the lifetime risk was 50% for the individual and 5% for the ideal risk factor individual

I’ll be utilizing this on every patient I see that does not have clinical ASCVD. I would encourage everybody to download this app and find out what your risk is. The higher your risk, the more likely your are to benefit from taking a statin drug, the lower it is, the less likely the benefits of lifelong drug treatment will outweigh the risks.

Understanding your risk of ASCVD is the crucial first step to having an informed discussion with your physician about atherosclerosis and the risks and benefits of drug therapy to prevent strokes and heart attacks.