14 DAY TRIAL // According to a group of experts, it could be that as much as 5.7 million American citizens have been classified as suffering from an elevated risk of heart attack for nothing.
The information also seems to indicate that millions of people may be currently mistreated for their conditions. They may receiving too many drugs, or may be under-treated for their diseases.
This mix-up may be caused by misuse of the Framingham model, the standard approach to assessing a person's risk of developing a heart condition.
The method, which is in accordance with national guidelines in the United States, takes into account factors included smoking, alcohol consumption, cholesterol levels and age, and then produces an estimate of the risk to the patient's heart.
The risk is calculated for a period of 10 years, after which time the test is repeated. There are currently three main categories of risk – moderate, moderately high and high.
The discrepancy the new investigation found stems from the fact that the risk calculated using a simplified version of the Framingham model does not match the actual risk, as calculated with the full version of the approach.
The conclusion belongs to a study by experts at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), MyHealthNewsDaily reports.
“We thought there might be significant differences between the two methods. And in fact, that turned out to be the case,” says UCSF assistant professor of medicine Michael Steinman.
In a recent statement, the study researcher also added that the discovery could have significant implications on how patients are treated for their conditions.
The new investigation looked at the health data belonging to 2,543 people, all of which participated in studies that were sponsored with grant money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The investigations took place between 2001 and 2006, the UCSF group says. The results show that about 15 percent of all patients that took the test were classified in a different risk group than they actually belonged to.
“A lot of individuals would be treated differently – either more aggressively or less aggressively – using the point-based model,” Steinman says. The total figure is 5.7 million people, he adds.
“Just about any computer or PDA in use today can calculate the original Framingham model. So there's not much reason to use the point-based system anymore in most instances,” the expert concludes.