Mortality prediction in the elderly

change that way of life. Have we as cardiologists, and have we as citizens of Europe, accepted drugs as a way out of a complex set of circumstances that are conducive to the appearance and maintenance of coronary heart disease? If that is the case, it is a collective failure not only of medical practice and health care policy. It is a failure of broader policies as well. They include policies that are supposed to regulate agriculture and education. That is because agricultural policy, as an example, determines the production of tobacco and the production of animal fats, and educational policies determine, as another example, the degree to which we teach our children to be physically active. The EUROASPIRE II data, and a plethora of data from other epidemiological studies, therefore suggest a much larger context in which to consider the flow of patients with coronary heart disease. O. FAERGEMAN Aarhus Amtssygehus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark