Framingham Risk Calculator

Have you ever wondered where do risk factors come from?

The Framingham study began in 1948, with the group of initially 5,209 patients recruited from the very same neighborhood — a town named Framingham, located in Massachusetts, US. 🏠🏠🏠

At the beginning of the study, none of the patients involved had suffered from any cardiovascular (CV) disease (such as heart attack or stroke). Scientists and physicians monitored the entire population's health for 72 years. Every single case of CV disease was carefully recorded and analyzed and compared to a person's lifestyle and blood test results.

This scrutinous observation identified major heart risk factors and created a Framingham 10-year risk assessment score.

Every time you see a cardiac risk calculator, or any medical recommendation regarding cholesterol, blood pressure or physical activity — think of all the people of Framingham who played an essential role in the development of modern medicine. 🎁

You may also want to check the perioperative risk of a heart attack or cardiac arrest (MICA) calculator (yet I need to disappoint you — its history is not half as impressive).

Our 10-year cardiovascular risk calculator is for people aged 30-79, with no heart attack history, claudication, coronary heart disease, or any other cardiovascular event.

Follow the steps enumerated below for the full benefit of our Framingham risk calculator 2017:

1. Enter your age in years.

   Cardiovascular risk generally increases with age.

2. Choose your sex.

   Cardiovascular risk is more significant for men.

3. Input systolic blood pressure.

   Systolic blood pressure's value is always greater than the diastolic pressure one. The typical recording method: Systolic/Diastolic (e.g., 120/80).

   Higher blood pressure bears a higher risk of a cardiac event.

4. Enter your total cholesterol.

   A high total cholesterol level increases artherosclerosis in your arteries and accelerates the coronary changes leading to a heart attack or a stroke.

5. What's your HDL (High Density Lipoproteins)?

   What a surprise! High HDL levels serve as a protective factor for your arteries. That's precisely why we call it the good cholesterol.

6. Are you a smoker?

   Smoking plays a vital role in the rapid development of the material clogging your arteries and leading to all kinds of vascular diseases — and cancers too!

Is everything nice and clear? 🤗 If the answer's yes, you may proceed to our other myocardial infraction calculator, such as TIMI score calculator.

Calculating the cardiovascular risk score might be a tremendous task; obtaining the results without using a heart attack risk calculators might take a significant amount of time. That's why we decided to simplify the equations so that they're easier to use. For a full set of information, visit the Framingham heart study page.

Here are the equations that we used in our 10-year risk calculator:

Men

where:

• ln — stands for natural logarithm;
• Risk score — the total amount of points;
• Age — given in years;
• Total cholesterol — given in mg/dL;
• HDL leve — given in mg/dL;
• Systolic Blood Pressure — given in mmHg;
• Smoker?
  • Yes = 1
  • No = 0
• Blood pressure treatment?
  • Yes = 1
  • No = 0

❗ For men aged > 70 years use: ((-2.84) × ln(70) × Smoker)

To calculate 10 years risk of death due to coronary incident, use:

where:

• Risk score is the number of points calculated in the previous step;
• exp is an exponent.

Women

where:

• Risk score — the total amount of points;
• Age — given in years;
• Total cholesterol — given in mg/dL;
• HDL level — given in mg/dL;
• Systolic Blood Pressure — given in mmHg.
• Smoker?
  • Yes = 1
  • No = 0
• Blood pressure treatment?
  • Yes = 1
  • No = 0

❗ For women aged > 78 years use: ((-3) × ln(78) × Smoker)

To calculate the individual 10 years risk of death, use:

where:

• Risk score is the number of points calculated in the previous step.

How about calculating other available heart scores? Use heart failure life expectancy calculator and CVD risk calculator to calculate the average congestive heart failure life expectancy and risk for developing severe cardiovascular complications, respectively.