A large majority of US adults with low short-term cardiovascular risk actually have a high lifetime risk, highlighting the need for stepwise risk stratification and long-term prevention efforts.
Whereas 82% of US adults are at low short-term risk, two thirds of this group, or 87 million people, are at high lifetime predicted risk for cardiovascular disease. These results provide support for use of a stepwise stratification system aimed at improving risk communication, and they provide a baseline for public health efforts aimed at increasing the proportion of Americans with low short-term and low lifetime risk for cardiovascular disease.
Perak et al. (Tue,) studied this question.