Riesgo cardiovascular global y edad vascular: herramientas claves en la prevención de enfermedades cardiovasculares

Background: with the society development and changes in life style, cardiovascular diseases are the first cause of death in the world and in Cuba. They could be preventable if acting on their cardiovascular risk factors that are stratified estimating the global cardiovascular risk. The main factors are summed up in tables, determining the possibility of presenting a cardiovascular disease in 5 or 10 years. Cardiovascular age is calculated on the basis of the global cardiovascular risk. It is a useful tool for motivating patients to eliminate the cardiovascular risk factors. For all the before said, the authors planed to review theoretical referents of the global cardiovascular risk and the vascular age.  Method : it was carried out a search in the Virtual Library of Infomed. 231 works were reviewed without year or country limitation, selecting 49 of them.  Development : there they were characterized 14 tables calculating the global cardiovascular risk factor, beginning from Framinghan study. In Cuba, it were used the classic ones of Framinghan, World Health Organization, International Society of Hypertension and Gaziano without laboratory teats. An individual’s vascular age is the same as it would be the age of a person with one and the same global vascular risk, but with all the cardiovascular risk factors at normal levels. This has a great emotional load leading the patient to take preventive measures. Conclusions: the tables stratifying the global cardiovascular risk should be adjusted to the epidemiologic reality of each country. Of all the tables used in Cuba, Gaziano´s without laboratory  test is the most workable one. Vascular age is an easy form of communicating the risk of suffering cardiovascular diseases.