Study of 5,000+ patients finds new measurement tool better at determining cardiac riskResearchers from the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, have devised a better way to determine an individual's risk for problems, such as heart attack and heart failure, according to a new study.The research team has developed the Intermountain Risk Score, a measurement tool that looks at age and sex, but also adds the results of routine blood tests, which are not included in the assessment system commonly used by physicians today.Researchers at Intermountain compared the Intermountain Risk Score with the Framingham Risk Score, currently the gold standard for measuring future coronary heart disease risk.

"Framingham does a good job of classifying groups of patients. But it's not as good at indentifying an individual's risk for disease," says Benjamin Horne, PhD, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center, and the principal author of the study.
"Our research has shown that the Intermountain Risk Score really improves a doctor's ability to measure patient risk. And it does it by including two simple and inexpensive tests: the complete blood count and metabolic profiles," he says.
"Adding the Intermountain Risk Score to the Framingham Risk Score substantially improves our ability to determine an individual's risk of future coronary heart disease and associated problems," says Dr. Horne.
"We are in the process of replicating these findings at an academic center in North Carolina. Our previous studies of the Intermountain Risk Score showed that it applies very well both to patients and to the general population in different geographic settings, so we expect it will improve on the Framingham Risk Score in that East Coast population as well," Dr. Horne said. "We are also evaluating which health conditions are best predicted by the Intermountain Risk Score, and how changes over time in laboratory values influence the scoring system's ability to predict health outcomes."