Reliability of Cardiovascular Risk Calculators to Estimate Accurately the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Patients With Sarcoidosis.

Chronic inflammation is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), but most risk calculators, including the Framingham risk score (FRS) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) risk score do not account for it. These calculators underestimate cardiovascular risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. To date, how these scores perform in the estimation of CVD risk in patients with sarcoidosis has not been assessed. In this study, the FRS and the ACC/AHA risk score were calculated for a previously identified cohort of patients with incident cases of sarcoidosis in Olmsted County, Minnesota, United States, from 1989 to 2013 as well as their gender- and age-matched comparators. The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) was estimated as the ratio of the predicted and observed numbers of CVD events. All CVD events were identified by diagnosis codes and were verified by individual medical record reviews. The predicted number of CVD events among 188 cases by FRS was 11.8 and the observed number of CVD events was 34, which corresponded to an SIR of 2.88 (95% confidence interval 2.06 to 4.04). FRS underestimated the risk of CVD events in patients with sarcoidosis by gender, age and severity of sarcoidosis. The predicted number of CVD events among cases by ACC/AHA risk score was 4.6 and the observed number of CVD events was 19, corresponding to an SIR of 4.11 (95% confidence interval 2.62 to 6.44). In conclusion, the FRS and the ACC/AHA risk score underestimate the risk of CVD in patients with sarcoidosis.