Cardiovascular risk: its assessment in clinical practice.

Cardiovascular disease is one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity in Western industrialised countries. Many factors impact on the likelihood of an individual suffering a stroke or heart attack. One of the greatest challenges facing clinicians today is how best to identify those individuals at increased risk, to prevent them becoming tomorrow's patients. Risk assessment tools can provide useful frameworks to support the identification of individuals who may benefit from therapeutic intervention; however, such tools should be used with care, as they do not include all the factors that contribute to future disease risk, and they are subject to an age bias. Nonetheless, they provide a systematic, evidence-based approach to the delivery of preventative healthcare services.