New health calculator PREDICTS if you will suffer a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years
A NEW online calculator can help doctors predict a patient's risk of heart disease and diabetes.
The aim is to tell patients how likely they are to suffer a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years, its creator said.
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It is hoped that such a stark warning will help doctors inspire their patients to make changes to their diet and get more exercise to ward off the deadly conditions.
Dr Mark DeBoer, from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said: "This boils it down to telling a patient, 'On the risk spectrum, you are here, and you're in a position where we're worried you're going to have a cardiovascular event in the next 10 years'.
"My hypothesis is that the more specific information you can give to individuals at risk, the more they will understand it and be motivated to make some changes."
The NHS offers a similar test for patients that predicts when they will suffer a heart attack or stroke.
It asks for your date of birth, smoking status and gender before estimating your "heart age".
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And for those whose heart age is deemed to be older than their actual age, the tool offers lifestyle advise on how to reverse the premature ageing.
Nearly one million Brits have used the old version of the NHS tool and just under 80 per cent of over-30s found their tickers were older than they were, increasing their risk of heart attack or stroke.
The findings were revealed in a study of 575,000 people in the journal BMJ Open.
Cardiovascular disease is responsible for more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK. This equates to around 155,000 people every year.
High blood pressure and cholesterol, smoking, a poor diet and lack of exercise can increase a person's risk of developing heart disease.
Traditionally doctors use five factors to help predict a person's risk of cardiovascular disease.
Dr DeBoer said these are obesity, high blood pressure, high fasting triglycerides (a type of fatty acid), low HDL (good cholesterol) and high fasting blood sugar.
Patients with at least three of these factors, are diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which puts them at greater risk of heart disease.
But the problem with that approach, Dr DeBoer said, is that it's too black and white.
"As is true in most processes in life, the reality is that this risk exists on a spectrum," he said.
"Someone who has values in each of these individual risk factors that are just below the cut-off still has more risk for future disease than somebody who has very low values. "
This traditional approach also fails to take into account factors that can make a difference, including race, ethnicity and gender.
For example, research has shown African-America men are unlikely to be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome but still have a high risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
Dr DeBoer said in contrast, the metabolic "crystal ball" tool he has developed, weighs traditional risk factors with these other factors, to produce a metabolic severity score.
And a study, testing the tool on 13,000 people, found it was a better risk predictor than looking at individual risk factors alone.
"This would suggest that when somebody has this congregation of metabolic syndrome findings, there probably is some underlying process that is producing those findings, and that those underlying processes are also contributing to future risk," Dr DeBoer said.
"The hope is that a scoring system like this could... calculate someone's risk and that information could be provided both to the physician and to the patient, who hopefully can start taking some preventative steps."
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