Cardiologists urge arterial screening of asymptomatic older people

Cardiologists urge screening of asymptomatic older people -- Charatan 333 (7560): 168 Data Supplement - Longer version -- BMJ: "An international group of prominent cardiologists has called for non-invasive screening for heart disease of all US asymptomatic men aged 45-75 and women aged 55-75.
The Screening For Heart Attack Prevention And Education (SHAPE) task force says that screening should be carried out to measure coronary artery calcium, with computed tomography scan, and carotid intima media thickness and plaque, with carotid ultrasonography.
The group's recommendations were published as a supplement to the American Journal of Cardiology in July, with Pfizer as the major sponsor.
The proposal hinges on the basic principle that traditional risk factor screening -the Framingham risk score and the SCORE criteria in Europe - does a good job of identifying people at very low and high risk of myocardial infarction or stroke over a decade but fails to single out 'at risk' men and women who represent everything in between. The Framingham risk factors include hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia, history of smoking, age, diabetes, and a family history of stroke or heart disease.
Prediman Shah, the head of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, professor of medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles, and a member of the task force, predicted that the new proposed guidelines will change health care./.../ "