Cardiovascular risk assessment methods yield unequal risk predictions: a large cross-sectional study in psychiatric secondary care outpatients

Abstract

Abstract Background Patients with a mental illness are more likely to develop, and die from, cardiovascular diseases (CVD), necessitating optimal CVD-risk (CVR)-assessment to enable early detection and treatment. Whereas psychiatrists use the metabolic syndrome (MetS)-concept to estimate CVR, GPs use absolute risk-models. Additionally, two PRIMROSE-models have been specifically designed for patients with severe mental illness. We aimed to assess the agreement in risk-outcomes between these CVR-methods. Methods To compare risk-outcomes across the various CVR-methods, we used somatic information of psychiatric outpatients from the PHAMOUS-, and MOPHAR-database, aged 40–70 years, free of past or current CVD and diabetes. We investigated: (1) the degree-of-agreement between categorical assessments (i.e. MetS-status vs. binary risk-categories); (2) non-parametric correlations between the number of MetS-criteria and absolute risks; and (3) strength-of-agreement between absolute risks. Results Seven thousand twenty-nine measurements of 3509 PHAMOUS-patients, and 748 measurements of 748 MOPHAR-patients, were included. There was systematic disagreement between the categorical CVR-assessments (all p < 0.036). Only MetS-status versus binary Framingham-assessment had a fair strength-of-agreement (κ = 0.23–0.28). The number of MetS-criteria and Framingham-scores, as well as MetS-criteria and PRIMROSE lipid-scores, showed a moderate-strong correlation (τ = 0.25–0.34). Finally, only the continuous PRIMROSE desk and lipid-outcomes showed moderate strength-of-agreement (ρ = 0.91). Conclusions The varying methods for CVR-assessment yield unequal risk predictions, and, consequently, carry the risk of significant disparities regarding treatment initiation in psychiatric patients. Considering the significantly increased health-risks in psychiatric patients, CVR-models should be recalibrated to the psychiatric population from adolescence onwards, and uniformly implemented by health care providers. Trial registration The MOPHAR research has been prospectively registered with the Netherlands Trial Register on 19th of November 2014 (NL4779).