With all the recent attention on coronary artery disease, comes this article on how heart disease sneaks up on many people:

Heart disease, which kills about half a million Americans each year, can take decades to develop. Yet it still catches people by surprise, especially women, who often regard it as a manÂ’s disease. Half the time, a heart attack is the first sign of trouble.

One way to calculate risk is a risk assessment tool based on the Framingham Heart Study (known as the Framingham risk score). Based on cardiac risk factors (i.e. blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking), it calculates a 10-year risk of having a heart attack or coronary death. If the 10-year risk is greater than 20 percent, it will have an affect on the goal LDL (“bad cholesterol”) level.