Cardiovascular disease has been the leading cause of death in the U.S. for more than a century. One reason for this high rate of mortality is that many people who could benefit from preventive care are not getting it, in part because they don't know they are at risk.

A person's risk of cardiovascular disease has usually been calculated as a percentage. A provider may tell a patient, “Eight out of 100 people with your profile may have a heart event within the next 10 years.” Though the prediction may be accurate, it's abstract; and many people don't know what to make of the information.

To make a person's risk of heart problems more concrete, researchers at Northwestern University have developed a free online tool that calculates a person's likely cardiovascular age based on their risk factors for heart disease.

The tool uses data such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, diabetes status and smoking status to calculate cardiovascular age.

Almost 33 percent of men with a high school education or less had a cardiovascular age more than 10 years older than their chronological age.

The new calculator, based on the American Heart Association's PREVENT equations, is designed to make cardiovascular disease risk easier for patients to understand by reframing it as a number that can be compared to their chronological age.

“We hope this tool helps doctors and patients discuss heart disease risk more effectively, so doctors can better inform their patients about preventive treatments,” Sadiya Khan, senior author on the study who led the development of the PREVENT equations, said in a statement.

The researchers tested the calculator on a representative population of more than 14,000 U.S. adults between the ages of 30 and 79 with no prior history of heart disease who had enrolled in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2011 and 2020.

The average chronological age of women in the study was 51 years old. Their cardiovascular age was about 54. Men had a wider age gap: their average chronological age was almost 50, but their average cardiovascular age was almost 57.

The difference between cardiovascular age and chronological age was even greater for men who identified as Black or Hispanic. Black men had a cardiovascular age that was about eight-and-a half years older than their chronological age, compared to almost eight years older for Latino men, almost seven years older for Asian men and more than six years older for white men.

The American Heart Association's PREVENT equations are designed to make cardiovascular disease risk easier for patients to understand by reframing it as a number that can be compared to their chronological age.

Black women had a cardiovascular age that was six years older than their chronological age, compared to Hispanic women who were almost five years older. White women's cardiovascular age was almost four years older than their chronological age. Asian women's hearts were almost three years older than their chronological age.

Race and ethnicity were not the only factors. Education affected the gap between a person's chronological and cardiovascular age. Almost 33 percent of men with a high school education or less had a cardiovascular age more than 10 years older than their chronological age.

Khan, the Magerstadt Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said the team plans further studies to see if presenting cardiovascular risk as a comparison between cardiovascular age and chronological age encourages people to get preventive treatment and improves cardiovascular outcomes.

The study and a related editorial are published in JAMA Cardiology.