New Tool Helps Identify Heart Risk

Study finds that patients with mental illness are at a higher risk of heart disease, and a new approach to health check-ups may help identify these risks more accurately. Researchers compared two methods of assessing cardiovascular risk: a widely used tool called SCORE2, which only looks at smoking, and a new approach called Targeted Health Dialogues (THD), which assesses a range of lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and sleep. The study found that THD was able to identify additional risk factors in patients with mental illness, and that many people with low risk according to SCORE2 were still at risk due to unhealthy habits.