Researchers have used anonymised GP records to develop a new method for assessing whether people are at risk from cardiovascular diseases (CVD), which they claim will improve national diagnosis rates and better identify those at risk among black and minority ethnic groups.
QRisk2 is a new equation developed to help doctors identify those most at risk of developing CVD for the first time. It has been developed using data from QResearch, a primary care database which contains anonymised data from 11m patients across the UK, to aid their research.
Unlike previous methods, it simultaneously takes into account extra risk from ethnicity, social deprivation and other clinical conditions such as family history of heart disease or diabetes.
QRisk2 project leader, Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox of the University of Nottingham, said: “Based on the study of 15 years of data from over 2m UK patients, QRisk2 is a contemporary and specific risk score that allows CVD risk to be personalised to the individual patient.”
A team of researchers from the Universities of Nottingham, Edinburgh and Queen Mary’s and from Bristol and Medway Primary Care Trusts took part in the project and used QResearch to aid their research.
New data is uploaded each night from the 551 EMIS general practices that participate in the QResearch project, helping to ensure the research findings were as accurate as possible.
Doctors will now be able to use the research findings to help decide how best to target patients with preventative measures such as lifestyle advice and cholesterol lowering treatments.
The research reveals that certain ethnic groups are at much greater risk than the general population, with men of Pakistani background being nearly twice as likely to suffer a heart attack or stoke. For Bangladeshi men, the risk increases by nearly 70%.
QRisk2 also identified the risk of CVD in patients from a South Asian background was higher than other ethnic groups. In Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, the risk is 43%, 80% and 35% higher respectively than in other ethnic background groups.
Prof Hippisley-Cox said: “QRisk2 has been developed for GPs, by GPs and without the co-operation of the thousands of working GPs who freely contribute their data to QResearch, projects like QRisk2 could not happen.”
Dr David Stables, clinical director of EMIS and a Director of QResearch, added: “QRisk2 is likely to be a more efficient tool for treatment decisions, supporting the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. We are currently working on software that will enable GPs to implement QRisk2 easily within clinical practice.”
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