The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is inviting comment as it develops a draft recommendation for assessing cardiovascular disease (CVD) via coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring or the ankle-brachial index.
The task force is considering the following questions:
- What is the effectiveness or comparative effectiveness of enhanced cardiovascular disease risk assessment with coronary artery calcium scoring or the ankle-brachial index on cardiovascular health outcomes?
- What is the effectiveness or comparative effectiveness of enhanced cardiovascular disease risk assessment with coronary artery calcium scoring or the ankle-brachial index on physiologic outcomes or patient and provider decision-making outcomes?
- Does the use of coronary artery calcium scoring or the ankle-brachial index to predict cardiovascular disease risk improve measures of calibration, discrimination, and risk reclassification compared with the use of multivariate cardiovascular disease risk assessment without these risk markers?
- What are the harms of using coronary artery calcium scoring or the ankle-brachial index for enhanced cardiovascular disease risk assessment?
- Does treatment guided by coronary artery calcium scoring or the ankle-brachial index lead to improved health outcomes?
- What are the harms of treatment guided by coronary artery calcium scoring or the ankle-brachial index?
The task force last evaluated the assessment of cardiovascular disease in 2018. It is taking comment on this current draft until May 22.