Key result
Systematic review protocol evaluates whether female-specific risk factors improve CVD risk prediction models in women.
Why the study?
Cardiovascular risk prediction models often do not incorporate female-specific risk factors despite cardiovascular disease being a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women.
Systematic Review
This systematic review protocol outlines the methodology to evaluate the performance of cardiovascular risk prediction models in women and assess the incremental value of female-specific risk factors.
Does not yet alter clinical risk prediction in women; leaves open the incremental value of female-specific factors pending review completion.
Purpose Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women. Cardiovascular risk prediction models are widely used to guide preventative management, although many do not incorporate female-specific risk factors. The aim of this review is to identify published cardiovascular risk prediction models for women or those which include female-specific predictors and to summarize the predictors and model performance. Methods The protocol was developed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA-P) guidelines. The protocol has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD420261420766). An update of the systematic review by Baart et al. will be performed by searching MEDLINE and EMBASE from July 27 2017 to May 2026 to identify primary articles reporting on the development and/or validation of models predicting incident cardiovascular disease in women. Data on model predictors, performance, validation and clinical usability will be extracted. Risk of bias will be assessed using PROBAST+AI. Findings will be synthesized descriptively although quantitative synthesis will be considered when sufficiently comparable studies are available. Conclusions This systematic review will provide an updated synthesis of cardiovascular risk prediction models in women and summarize how female-specific risk factors are incorporated into contemporary risk assessment.
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Frank et al. (2026) conducted a systematic review in Cardiovascular disease risk prediction. Cardiovascular risk prediction models incorporating female-specific predictors was evaluated on Model performance and clinical usability for predicting incident fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular outcomes. This protocol outlines a planned systematic review to evaluate whether cardiovascular risk prediction models incorporating female-specific risk factors improve predictive performance in women.
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