Ideal cardiovascular health in a patient population referred for vascular evaluation to University Medical Center: The Utrecht Cardiovascular Cohort

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading public health concern, and its epidemiological status is a significant worldwide issue. In 2010 and 2022, the American heart association (AHA) published two guidelines with individual scoring systems, 'Life's simple seven' (LS7) and 'Life's essential eight' (LE8), for helping people assess and prevent CVDs. Many articles have reported the general population's risk factors for LS7 and LE8. However, few studies considered LS7 and LE8 in the patient population. Besides, only some articles compared these two frameworks. Thus, my research is to describe ideal cardiovascular health distribution in the UCC-CVRM cohort, identify which factors relate to ideal cardiovascular health distribution in patients, detect which variables can be associated with LS7 or LE8 assessment, and compare LS7 with LE8 classification situation in this study population. The results showed that based on LS7, 5.2%, 58.5%, and 36.3% of patients were assigned to low, moderate, and ideal CVH levels, respectively. Correspondingly, the proportions by LE8 were 12.5%, 66.8%, and 12.7%. Education level was related to higher LS7 and LE8 scores. CVD history and family history of CVD were associated with decreased LE8 scores. The blood pressure (BP) component score was the lowest among the three CVH levels in LS7 and LE8. 74.8 percent of patients were assigned to the same CVH level in LS7 and LE8. Furthermore, LE8 can more precisely categorize patients, demonstrating its superiority in clinical practice. So we suggest that patients should focus on blood pressure management and LE8 should be replaced LS7 in clinical practice as the new cardiovascular assessment guideline.