We have experienced a great deal of success in secondary prevention, but now we need to accurately assess risk so that we can identify patients who are likely to develop heart disease in the next few years and apply clinical approaches to reducing the likelihood of developing a heart attack. According to the document, the first step toward primary prevention is using an algorithm based on the Framingham Heart Study.
Physicians can follow the algorithm to measure the risk of their patients.
The algorithm adds up the contribution of each of the individual risk factors, creating an overall risk score. Each of these needs to be appropriately treated by physicians. But, it's also important to have an overall risk assessment. We should become very aggressive in reducing all risk factors for a person who is at very high overall risk. For someone who has only one risk factor, we may not have to be as aggressive.