New Online Tool Calculates Your Risk of Heart Disease

There’s a new tool that predicts the 10-year risk of heart disease and stroke for people over 40, specifically calibrated for the country you live in.

The up-to-date set of risk charts and calculators was developed by Harvard University and published this week Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

You can use them at www.globorisk.org.

The “office-based” chart requires only your country, age, systolic blood pressure, height, weight and whether or not you smoke. Another “lab-based” chart also asks for your total cholesterol level and whether or not you have diabetes, based on lab blood tests.

The charts were designed to be particularly useful in countries where labs and health resources are limited, but they’re applicable in 182 countries.

Here’s an example:
A non-smoker, 5′ 10″ (178 cm) Canadian man between the ages of 50 and 54, weighing 165 pounds (75 kg) with a systolic blood pressure of 75 has a 4 per cent chance of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years.

The research that developed the tool found that the highest risks of cardiovascular disease were in countries in Central and Southeast Asia and in Eastern Europe. CVD risk also varied significantly across countries and across genders.

For example, the proportion of people in high-income countries at high risk for CVD ranged from 1 per cent for South Korean women to 42 per cent for Czech men, and in low- and middle-income countries it ranged from 2 per cent in Uganda for both men and women to 13 per cent in Iranian men.