Prevalence of high risk for cardiovascular disease among the brazilian adult population, according to different risk calculators: A comparative study

Abstract

This study compares the proportion of the Brazilian adult population classified as being at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) based on six different CVD risk calculators in order to assess the agreement across different tools. A cross-sectional study was conducted using laboratory data from the National Health Survey (NHS). The prevalence rates of high 10-year risk of CVD among individuals aged between 45 and 64 years were as follows: Brazilian Society of Cardiology (BSC) global risk score (GRS) – 38.1%; American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) score – 44.1%; Fram-ingham Heart Study/GRS – 19.4%; European Society of Cardiology SCORE – 14.6%; World Health Organization/International Society of Hypertension (WHO/ISH) score – 3.1%; and Lim et al. – 2.5%. The CVD calculators showed poor agreement for the identification of high-risk individuals and a high level of agreement for the identification of low/moderate risk individuals, except for the ACC/AHA risk score. The findings show that the proportion of individuals classified as eligible for preventive drug therapy varies from tool to tool, which could lead to the misinterpreta-tion of risk, poor cost-effectiveness of therapy and difficulty implementing public policies.