10-Year Heart Disease Risk Calculator (AHA PREVENT)
Estimate the 10-year (or 30-year) chance of heart attack, stroke or heart failure with the American Heart Association’s PREVENT equations, from age, sex, cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, eGFR and BMI. An estimate to discuss with a doctor, not a diagnosis.
How to Use
- Choose 10-year or, for ages 30–59, 30-year risk.
- Enter sex, age (30–79), total and HDL cholesterol in mg/dL or mmol/L, and your systolic (top) blood pressure.
- Answer the yes/no questions: blood pressure medicine, diabetes, current smoking and statin use.
- Enter eGFR from a kidney blood test (the GFR calculator works it out from creatinine) and BMI, or switch to height and weight.
- Read the total cardiovascular risk, the ASCVD and heart failure parts, and the picture of 100 people; Show Work lists every term of the equation.
Worked Example
The paper’s own example. Khan and colleagues describe a woman of 50 with total cholesterol 240 mg/dL, HDL 55 mg/dL, treated systolic pressure 160 mm Hg, no diabetes, no statin, not smoking, BMI 35 and eGFR 90. This calculator gives 5.4 % total CVD, 3.6 % ASCVD and 2.5 % heart failure over 10 years, the same as the paper; if she smoked, 9.3 %, 6.0 % and 4.7 %. Her 30-year total risk is 30.7 % (the paper rounds it to 31 %).
Inside the sum. For the woman of 50 with diabetes, treated systolic 160 and cholesterol 200/45 mg/dL: non-HDL cholesterol is (200 − 45) × 0.02586 = 4.008 mmol/L, so its term is 4.008 − 3.5 = 0.508; the systolic term is (160 − 130) ÷ 20 = 1.5; the age term is (50 − 55) ÷ 10 = −0.5. Multiplying every term by its coefficient and adding the constant −3.307728 gives x = −1.7596, and ex ÷ (1 + ex) = 0.1468, which rounds to 14.7 %.
The common mistake: adding the parts. For that woman, ASCVD is 9.2 % and heart failure 8.1 %. Adding them gives 17.3 %, but her total CVD risk is 14.7 %, because some people would have both and each person counts once in the total. Use the total CVD figure for “any of these events”.
Show Work
Formulas
About the PREVENT Equations
The American Heart Association released the Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease EVENTs (PREVENT) equations in November 2023 (Khan SS, Matsushita K, Sang Y, et al. Development and Validation of the American Heart Association’s PREVENT Equations. Circulation 2024;149(6):430–449, doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.123.067626). They were built for US adults aged 30 to 79 without known cardiovascular disease, from 25 data sets with 3,281,919 people, and tested in 3,330,085 more from 21 other data sets. The models are sex-specific, leave race out, and allow for the chance of dying from something else first.
The older Pooled Cohort Equations of 2013 predicted only atherosclerotic disease, for ages 40–79, from age, sex, race, cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes and smoking. PREVENT adds kidney function (eGFR) and statin use, predicts heart failure, and offers 30-year estimates. The full set has optional add-ons (HbA1c, urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio and a ZIP-code deprivation index); this page uses the base model, which needs none of them.
The numbers here come from a line-by-line port of the open-source R package preventr 0.12.0 by Martin Mayer, whose coefficients are taken from the paper’s supplement. Before publishing, the port was checked against the package’s own test results: 22 cases, 110 figures, all identical. Neither the paper nor the package labels results as low, medium or high, so this page shows the percentage only.
About This Tool
This calculator runs the PREVENT base model for 10-year (and, for ages 30–59, 30-year) risk of total cardiovascular disease, ASCVD, heart failure, coronary heart disease and stroke. It refuses to give a number when any input is outside the ranges the preventr package accepts (age 30–79, systolic 90–180 mm Hg, total cholesterol 130–320 mg/dL or 3.36–8.28 mmol/L, HDL 20–100 mg/dL or 0.52–2.59 mmol/L, eGFR 15–140, BMI 18.5–39.9), because the equations were not built for those values. Smoking means current cigarette smoking; BMI from height and weight is rounded to one decimal, as the package does.
A risk estimate describes people with your numbers on average. It leaves out family history, other illnesses and much else your doctor knows, and it is not meant for anyone who already has heart disease, a past stroke or heart failure. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
For general information only — not medical advice. Talk to a doctor or other qualified professional about your own health.
Related tools: Blood Pressure Category Checker, GFR Calculator, and BMI Calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a 10-year risk of 14.7 % mean?
It is an estimate for a group: of 100 people with exactly these numbers, about 15 would be expected to have a heart attack, stroke or heart failure within 10 years and about 85 would not. It cannot say which group one person is in. It is a starting point for a conversation with your doctor, not a diagnosis.
What are total CVD, ASCVD and heart failure?
PREVENT predicts total cardiovascular disease, which combines atherosclerotic CVD (ASCVD: coronary heart disease and stroke) and heart failure, plus each part on its own. For a woman of 50 with treated blood pressure of 160, cholesterol 200/45 and diabetes, the 10-year figures are 14.7 % total, 9.2 % ASCVD and 8.1 % heart failure. The parts overlap, so they do not add up to the total.
Why does it ask for eGFR and BMI?
Kidney function (eGFR) is one of the predictors in every PREVENT equation: for that same woman, an eGFR of 45 instead of 90 raises the 10-year total from 14.7 % to 27.2 %. BMI is used only in the heart failure equation: BMI 25 instead of 35 lowers her heart failure risk from 8.1 % to 6.1 % but leaves the total at 14.7 %.
How is PREVENT different from the older Pooled Cohort Equations?
The 2013 Pooled Cohort Equations estimate 10-year ASCVD for ages 40–79 and use race. PREVENT, published by the American Heart Association in 2023, covers ages 30–79, adds kidney function, predicts heart failure as well as ASCVD, gives 30-year estimates, leaves race out and allows for the competing risk of dying from other causes.
Who is this calculator not for?
People who already have heart disease, a past stroke or heart failure, because PREVENT was built for adults without known cardiovascular disease. It also gives no estimate outside its ranges: age 30–79, systolic 90–180 mm Hg, total cholesterol 130–320 mg/dL, HDL 20–100 mg/dL, eGFR 15–140 and BMI 18.5–39.9. A systolic above 180 needs prompt medical attention, not a risk score.
How do I use the 10-Year Heart Disease Risk Calculator (AHA PREVENT)?
Simply type your numbers and read the result, which refreshes the instant you change something. There is nothing to submit and nothing to wait for.
Does it cost anything or need an account?
No. The tool is completely free, there is no account to create, and it keeps working offline after the page first loads.
Is anything I type uploaded?
No. The tool works entirely on your device, so the values you enter never leave your browser.
Common Use Cases
Before a check-up
A man of 55 with diabetes who smokes, systolic 164, cholesterol 227/91 and eGFR 71 has a 17.3 % 10-year total risk, 9.9 % ASCVD and 15.4 % heart failure: numbers to take to the appointment.
Seeing what smoking adds
In the paper’s own example, a woman of 50 (cholesterol 240/55, treated systolic 160, BMI 35, eGFR 90) has a 5.4 % 10-year risk; as a smoker it is 9.3 %.
A long view at 45
A woman of 45 on a statin with systolic 162 and cholesterol 198/44 has a 3.6 % 10-year risk but a 25.0 % 30-year risk, which says more at her age.
Kidney results in context
The same woman with an eGFR of 47 instead of 80 (and BMI 25) has a 7.2 % 10-year risk, roughly double, because kidney function is part of every PREVENT equation.
Lab results in mmol/L
A man of 60 with total cholesterol 5.5 mmol/L, HDL 1.2 mmol/L, untreated systolic 138, eGFR 85, 178 cm and 86 kg (BMI 27.1) has a 7.9 % 10-year risk.
Last updated: