Why the study?
Vascular ageing can identify individuals at elevated cardiovascular risk early, but is seldom measured in routine clinical practice due to practical issues and lack of consensus on characterizing physiological versus pathological vascular ageing.
Design
State-of-the-art review
The review emphasizes the potential of vascular ageing assessment to identify sub-clinical cardiovascular risk and advocates for its integration into routine clinical practice.
Prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the largest public health challenges of our time. Identifying individuals at increased cardiovascular risk at an asymptomatic, sub-clinical stage is of paramount importance for minimizing disease progression as well as the substantial health and economic burden associated with overt CVD. Vascular ageing (VA) involves the deterioration in vascular structure and function over time and ultimately leads to damage in the heart, brain, kidney, and other organs. Vascular ageing encompasses the cumulative effect of all cardiovascular risk factors on the arterial wall over the life course and thus may help identify those at elevated cardiovascular risk, early in disease development. Although the concept of VA is gaining interest clinically, it is seldom measured in routine clinical practice due to lack of consensus on how to characterize VA as physiological vs. pathological and various practical issues. In this state-of-the-art review and as a network of scientists, clinicians, engineers, and industry partners with expertise in VA, we address six questions related to VA in an attempt to increase knowledge among the broader medical community and move the routine measurement of VA a little closer from bench towards bedside.
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Climie et al. (2023) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: