background: world health organization (who) defines three goals to assess the performance of a health system: the state of health, fairness in financial contribution and responsiveness. we assessed the responsiveness of health system for patients with diabetes in a defined population cohort in tehran, iran. methods: total responsiveness and eight domains (prompt attention, dignity, communicatio...

BACKGROUND The SCORE (Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation) scale uses conventional risk factors for the prediction of the 10-year risk of fatal atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD). The high-risk version of SCORE is recommended by the European Society of Cardiology for use in the populations of Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union (CEE/FSU). Given the role of hazardous alc...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Prediction rules for the risk of stroke have been proposed. However, most studies were conducted with whites or for secondary prevention, and it is not clear whether these models apply to the Chinese population. The purpose of this study was to construct a simple points-based clinical model for predicting incident stroke among Chinese adults in Taiwan. METHODS We estima...

AIMS Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with adverse outcome. Whether recently discovered genetic risk markers improve AF risk prediction is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS We derived and validated a novel AF risk prediction model from 32 possible predictors in the Women's Health Study (WHS), a cohort of 20 822 women without cardiovascular disease (CVD) at baseline followed prospectively for...

BACKGROUND Myocardial fibrosis (MF) in noninfarcted myocardium may be an interstitial disease pathway that confers vulnerability to hospitalization for heart failure, death, or both across the spectrum of heart failure and ejection fraction. Hospitalization for heart failure is an epidemic that is difficult to predict and prevent and requires potential therapeutic targets associated with outcom...

BACKGROUND Although many risk factors for Metabolic syndrome (MetS) have been reported, there is no clinical score that predicts its incidence. The purposes of this study were to create and validate a risk score for predicting both incidence and recovery from MetS in a large cohort. METHODS Subjects without MetS at enrollment (n = 13,634) were randomly divided into 2 groups and followed to re...

BACKGROUND Current guidelines define severe aortic stenosis in patients with aortic valve area normalized to body surface area (AVA/BSA) <0.6 cm2/m2; yet, this cutoff has never been validated. Moreover, it is not known whether AVA normalization to other body size indexes allows improved outcome prediction. We aim to test the value of AVA normalized to body size for outcome prediction in asympto...

BACKGROUND Geriatric conditions may predict outcomes beyond age and standard risk factors. Our aim was to investigate a wide spectrum of geriatric conditions in survivors after an acute coronary syndrome. METHODS A total of 342 patients older than 65 years were included. At hospital discharge, 5 geriatric conditions were evaluated: frailty (Fried and Green scores), physical disability (Barthe...

BACKGROUND Fragments of insulin-like growth factor binding protein 4 (IGFBP-4) are potential new biomarkers for cardiac risk assessment. The fragments are generated on specific cleavage by pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A, which exerts proatherogenic activity. This study investigated the prognostic value of IGFBP-4 fragments in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. ME...