There is uncertainty whether current strategies for providing CVD risk scores  affect CVD events .
Providing CVD risk scores may slightly reduce CVD risk factor levels and may increase preventive medication prescribing in higher-risk people without evidence of harm .
BACKGROUND The current paradigm for cardiovascular disease ( CVD ) emphasises absolute risk assessment to guide treatment decisions in primary prevention .
Although the derivation and validation of multivariable risk assessment tools , or CVD risk scores , have attracted considerable attention , their effect on clinical outcomes is uncertain .
OBJECTIVES To assess the effects of evaluating and providing CVD risk scores in adults without prevalent CVD on cardiovascular outcomes , risk factor levels , preventive medication prescribing , and health behaviours .
Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound treatment studies in EMBASE.
OBJECTIVE The ability to accurately identify articles about therapy in large bibliographic data bases such as EMBASE is important for research ers and clinicians . Our study aim ed to develop optimal search strategies for detecting sound treatment studies in EMBASE in the year 2000 . METHODS H and search es of journals were compared with retrievals from EMBASE for c and i date search strategies . Six trained research assistants review ed fifty-five journals indexed in EMBASE and rated articles using purpose and quality indicators . C and i date search strategies were developed for identifying treatment articles and then tested , and the retrievals were compared with the h and - search data . The operating characteristics of the strategies were calculated . RESULTS Three thous and eight hundred fifty articles were original studies on treatment , of which 1,256 ( 32.6 % ) were method ologically sound . Combining search terms revealed a top performing strategy ( r and om:.tw . OR clinical trial:.mp . OR exp health care quality ) with sensitivity of 98.9 % and specificity of 72.0 % . Maximizing specificity , a top performing strategy ( double-blind:.mp . OR placebo:.tw . OR blind : .tw . ) achieved a value over 96.0 % , but with compromised sensitivity at 51.7 % . A 3-term strategy achieved the best optimization of sensitivity and specificity ( r and om:.tw . OR placebo:.mp . OR double-blind:.tw . ) , with both these values over 92.0 % . CONCLUSION Search strategies can achieve high performance for retrieving sound treatment studies in EMBASE
There is uncertainty whether current strategies for providing CVD risk scores  affect CVD events .
Providing CVD risk scores may slightly reduce CVD risk factor levels and may increase preventive medication prescribing in higher-risk people without evidence of harm .
BACKGROUND The current paradigm for cardiovascular disease ( CVD ) emphasises absolute risk assessment to guide treatment decisions in primary prevention .
Although the derivation and validation of multivariable risk assessment tools , or CVD risk scores , have attracted considerable attention , their effect on clinical outcomes is uncertain .
OBJECTIVES To assess the effects of evaluating and providing CVD risk scores in adults without prevalent CVD on cardiovascular outcomes , risk factor levels , preventive medication prescribing , and health behaviours .