Frankfurt am Main – Every year more than 45,000 people die from heart attacks and 65,000 from sudden cardiac death in Germany because many of those affected knew too late or not at all about their heart disease and the risk factors that caused it. In order to protect people from these life-threatening heart emergencies and to help assess the risk of a heart attack occurring for the first time or again, the German Heart Foundation has renewed and expanded its heart attack risk test (www.herzstiftung.de/ risk). What is new is that the test determines the age of the heart. “The test result makes it easy to see whether there is a need for action,” explains Prof. Dr. medical Heribert Schunkert, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the German Heart Foundation. In addition, the test can be used by both people with heart disease and healthy people who have not been diagnosed with heart disease to assess their personal risk. In people who already have heart disease, the risk of another heart attack is estimated instead of heart age. Overall, the evaluation is based on the newly stored risk scores1 even more differentiated than in the previous version. The risk test was scientifically performed by a Munich team of cardiologists led by Prof. Dr. medical Heribert Schunkert, Medical Director of the German Heart Center Munich (DHM) and Dr. medical Fabian Starnecker, resident at the DHM’s clinic for cardiovascular diseases. Interested parties can take the online test on the website at www.herzstiftung.de/risk. “In most cases, the heart attack is preceded by a long-standing disease of the coronary arteries, coronary artery disease, which in turn is caused by risk diseases such as high blood pressure, lipid metabolism disorders, i.e. high cholesterol, smoking or diabetes. The risk test helps to uncover these risks quickly and easily,” explains Prof. Schunkert.
Calculation of the individual risk
The personal risk profile is determined using 23 quick-to-answer questions. In addition to age and gender, e.g. B. asked about weight, previous illnesses, blood pressure, cholesterol, nicotine consumption, diet, exercise and medication. At the end, the result is given with an individual assessment of the risk. For both people without and people with pre-existing cardiovascular diseases, the test indicates how high the risk is compared to the average risk. The result is calculated using scientifically tested risk scores. “However, a bad test result does not mean that you are helplessly at the mercy of a heart attack, but rather it serves as a request to do something for your health,” emphasizes Dr. Starnecker and advises: “It is best to see an internist or cardiologist to develop a strategy against the heart attack together.”
Pay attention to a healthy lifestyle
The risk test is not intended to replace a visit to the doctor, but to help assess the personal risk of cardiovascular disease so that countermeasures can be taken as early as possible. The aim is to show ways to keep the heart young longer, stay healthy and also minimize the risk of another heart attack. The test provides people with healthy hearts as well as people who are already ill with important information as to whether more should be done for their own heart health.
Podcast: Testing the heart risk – how well is that possible?
In the current podcast, Prof. Heribert Schunkert and Dr. Fabian Starnecker, who helped develop the test, how reliable such a test can be:
The podcast “imPULS – knowledge for health” now has around 110,000 listeners.
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1 The risk scores of the heart attack risk test
- Framingham Risk Score: Rospleszcz, et al., Temporal trends in cardiovascular risk factors and performance of the Framingham Risk Score and the Pooled Cohort Equations, BMJ JECH, 2019.
- SCORE2-OP risk prediction algorithms: SCORE2-OP working group and ESC Cardiovascular risk collaboration, SCORE2 risk prediction algorithms:
a) new models to estimate 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease in Europe, European Heart Journal, 2021
b) estimating incident cardiovascular event risk in older persons in four geographical risk regions, European Heart Journal, 2021.