Developing an Internally Validated Veterans Affairs Women Cardiovascular Disease Risk Score Using Veterans Affairs National Electronic Health Records.

Jeon-Slaughter H, Chen X, Tsai S, Ramanan B, Ebrahimi R. Developing an Internally Validated Veterans Affairs Women Cardiovascular Disease Risk Score Using Veterans Affairs National Electronic Health Records. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2021 Feb 23; 10(5):e019217.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

Background The current American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association women cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk score suboptimally estimates CVD risk for young and minority women in the military. The current study developed an internally validated CVD risk score for women military service members and veterans using the Veterans Affairs (VA) national electronic health records data. Methods and Results The study cohort included 69 574 White, Black, and Hispanic women service members and veterans aged 30 to 79 years in 2007 treated in the VA Health Care System between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2017 (henceforth, VA women). Stratified by race and ethnicity, the new VA women CVD risk model estimated risk coefficients and 10-year CVD risk using a time-variant covariate Cox model. Harrell C-statistics, calibration plots, and net classification index were used to assess accuracy and prognostic performance of the new VA women CVD risk model. The new internally validated VA women CVD risk score performed better in predicting VA women 10-year atherosclerosis cardiovascular disease risk than the pooled cohort American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association risk score in both accuracy (White Harrell C-statistics, 70% versus 61%; Black, 68% versus 63%) and prognostic performance (White net classification index, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.26-0.33; Black net classification index, 0.06; 95% CI, 0.03-0.09). Conclusions The proposed VA women CVD risk score improves accuracy of the existing American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association CVD risk assessment tool in predicting long-term CVD risk for VA women, particularly in young and racial/ethnic minority women.