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Risk tool to help heart treatment
Auckland University researchers are developing a tool that should accurately predict the risk of heart attack or stroke for Maori, Pacific and other New Zealand adults.
The Health Research Council has agreed to fund the work led by Professor Rod Jackson from the School of Population Health for another five years.
He says that will allow his team to bring to fruition its vision of more accurate vascular risk prediction and management, which will help to reduce inequities in treatment and outcomes.
New Zealand was the first country to recommend GPs use a risk prediction tool to take account of a patient’s combined risk factor status before making treatment decisions.
However the tool they use is based on an American study from the 1970s, and no longer reflects massive improvements in the treatment of cardiovascular disease in the developed world over the past 40 years.
Professor Jackson’s team has been collecting data from clinicians since 2002 and now has information on more than half a million New Zealanders, including more than 57,000 Maori, 55,000 Pacific people, 35,000 South Asians, and 25,000 Chinese.
Tests need to take into account not only blood cholesterol or blood pressure but other factors such as smoking and diabetes.
Copyright © 2016, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
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