Cardiovascular risk assessment beyond Systemic Coronary Risk Estimation: A role for organ damage markers

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular risk assessment in the clinical practice is mostly based on risk charts, such as Framingham risk score and Systemic Coronary Risk Estimation (SCORE). These enable clinicians to estimate the impact of cardiovascular risk factors and assess individual cardiovascular risk profile. Risk charts, however, do not take into account subclinical organ damage, which exerts independent influence on risk and may amplify the estimated risk profile. Inclusion of organ damage markers in the assessment may thus contribute to improve this process. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to evaluate the influence of implementation of SCORE charts with widely available indexes of organ damage, with t…