Risk calculators

Health professionals often use risk calculators to assess their patients' 10 year cardiovascular risk to help them identifying the need for lifestyle changes and medication

Risk calculators generate a 'score' which estimates the probability of cardiovascular disease in individuals who have not already developed major atherosclerotic disease. These scores aid decision making in clinical practice and guide the type of interventions that doctors and other health care professionals advise and prescribe.

Risk calculators should not be used for people already identified as being at high risk, such as those with diabetes or FH.

Risk calculators have been developed based on the following:

Framingham
Until recently, NICE recommended this equation for calculating cardiovascular risk.

Joint British Societies (JBS)
The official cardiovascular risk charts published in the British National Formulary (BNF) are based on those given in the JBS2 guidelines.

JBS3 
The Joint British Societies' consensus recommendations for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (JBS3) are now available, and refer to lifetime risk as well as 10 year risk. Download the calculator.

ASSIGN
ASSIGN was developed for use in Scottish populations and includes risk factors not used by Framingham, such as family history and social deprivation.

QRISK®2
This risk algorithm has been developed by doctors and academics working in the UK and is based on routinely collected data from many thousands of GPs across the country. A version using lifetime risk is available at www.qrisk.org