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Heart Attack Risk: Are Scores Failing Us?
16 Dec, 2025
Summary
- New research suggests current medical screening misses nearly half of heart attacks.
- ASCVD and PREVENT scores classified many patients as low risk before their attack.
- Researchers call for better, personalized approaches to predict heart attack risk.
New research indicates that current medical screening methods might be failing to detect nearly half of all heart attacks. This suggests that millions of heart attacks occurring annually could potentially be prevented with improved detection strategies.
Analysis of patient records revealed that established risk assessment tools, such as the ASCVD score and the PREVENT score, categorized a significant percentage of individuals as having low or borderline risk in the two days preceding their heart attack. This finding underscores the limitations of current population-based risk assessments for individual patient evaluation.
Researchers propose that a shift towards more personalized approaches, potentially including direct testing for atherosclerosis, is necessary. This could help identify individuals at higher risk who may not present with typical symptoms or fall into higher-risk categories based on existing scoring systems, thereby enabling earlier intervention and prevention.
