Specialists of the Petrozavodsk State University Medical Institute together with the IT company K-Sky LLC (resident of the Skolkovo Foundation, developer of the Webiomed platform) developed a mathematical model for predicting the development of asymptomatic carotid atherosclerosis in obese and overweight patients. This was reported to socialbites.ca by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.
Overweight and obesity are the most common risk factors for the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases worldwide. Currently, a system for assessing cardiovascular risk (CVR) based on risk scales (SCORE) is used as part of primary prevention in Russia. However, this tool has a low predictive ability with low CVR values at startup.
Atherosclerosis is the process of deposition of cholesterol in the walls of blood vessels. It can often be asymptomatic, although its presence makes it possible to classify a patient without cardiovascular disease into the category of high or very high CVR. Therefore, it is important to develop new diagnostic algorithms.
One of these methods is the mathematical model developed to confirm the atherosclerotic process in the carotid arteries. The model is based on data from 2.9 million patients examined and treated in Russia.
Models to assess the probability of having asymptomatic carotid atherosclerosis based on machine learning methods were characterized by high predictive ability (75-98%).
“We believe the integration of this mathematical model into the diagnostic algorithm will increase significantly to decide whether to send a patient for ultrasound examination of the brachiocephalic arteries as part of risk stratification for a patient with low cardiovascular risk at baseline according to the SCORE scale. While optimizing the accuracy, the costs of providing medical care, ”Mark Druzhilov, employee of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, told socialbites.ca.
In the future, scientists plan to optimize tools to predict the risk of thromboembolic, atherothrombotic and hemorrhagic complications, which will reduce mortality from cardiovascular diseases.