The multifactorial cardiovascular risk

Importance of risk assessment: The prevention of cardiovascular disease is a major public health goal. Cardiovascular diseases are the number one caus e of mortality in industrialized countries and account for an important par t of health care expenditures. In this context, assessment of the cardiovas cular risk for a given subject based on epidemiological data and individual risk factors can be used to determine his/her risk of ischemic heart disea se or stroke. The Framingham formula: The most widely used assessment method is the Frami ngham formula which integrates age, sex, blood pressure, smoking habits and presence or not of diabetes. This formula gives an objective, reproducible estimation of the cardiovascular risk and is a useful tool for therapeutic rationale and primary and secondary prevention. Interest and limitations: This new global approach to the individual patien t has interesting practical and economic implications but remains imperfect due to certain limitations (other risk factors not taken into account beca use they are difficult to quantify or occurred recently). For daily practic e however, it provides a useful tool appreciated by clinicians and patients .