[New instruments, same risks].

This issue of the journal includes a publication on the adaptation of the Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) to estimate the risk of death from preventable diseases such as cerebrovascular disease (CVD) and coronary heart disease (CHD), among other cardiovascular diseases.1 The original system was designed to help guide clinicians responsible for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and provides risk estimates for non-diabetic patients aged 40-65 years based on sex, age, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, and smoking history. The function exists for countries with high and low cardiovascular risk.2 Three functions are currently available to calculate cardiovascular risk in Spain: the classic Framingham function, which overestimates risk in the Spanish population,3 a version of this function which was adapted for the Spanish population by the REGICOR (Registre Gironí del Cor) study investigators in collaboration with investigators from the Framingham Heart Study, and which provides estimates whose validity for Spain was shown in the VERIFICA (Validez de la Ecuación de Riesgo Individual de Framingham de Incidentes Coronarios Adaptada) study,4,5 and, more recently, the SCORE function adjusted in a cohort of over 100 000 Europeans aged 40-65 years and selected about 20 years ago.1 In light of the fact that this function appears to overestimate risk in several European populations, both low and high risk, it became necessary to calibrate it for use in each country.6-8 As the number of people with low (never null) cardiovascular risk is very high in any population (generally over 50%), a large number of events will occur in this group simply because of it contains such a high New Instruments, Same Risks Jaume Marrugata and Joan Salab