Optimal risk-assessment scheduling for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease

Abstract In this work, we introduce a personalized and age-specific net benefit function, composed of benefits and costs, to recommend optimal timing of risk assessments for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention. We extend the 2-stage landmarking model to estimate patient-specific CVD risk profiles, adjusting for time-varying covariates. We apply our model to data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, comprising primary care electronic health records from the UK. We find that people at lower risk could be recommended an optimal risk-assessment interval of 5 years or more. Time-varying risk factors are required to discriminate between more frequent schedules for high-risk people.