Evaluation of electronic health record analysis as a Prognostic Tool in essential hypertension
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22813663Keywords:
essential hypertension, electronic health records, prognostic model, cardiovascular risk, risk predictionAbstract

Background: Guideline-endorsed risk scores such as the Framingham profile and the ACC/AHA pooled cohort equations use a fixed set of office-measured variables, while electronic health records now hold years of longitudinal blood pressure, laboratory, medication-fill and comorbidity data these static scores never use.
Objective: To derive and validate an electronic health record-based prognostic model for major adverse cardiovascular events in essential hypertension and compare it against the Framingham profile and the ACC/AHA pooled cohort equations.
Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study of 8,542 adults with essential hypertension (derivation n=5,979, validation n=2,563), followed a median 5.2 years for a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure hospitalization or cardiovascular death, and fit a logistic regression model using blood pressure variability, renal trend, adherence, target-organ damage and comorbidity burden.
Results: The electronic health record model discriminated the outcome better than the pooled cohort equations (C-statistic 0.81 vs 0.74) or the Framingham profile (0.81 vs 0.72, both p<0.001), was well calibrated, and separated five-year event incidence from 3.2% to 28.9% across risk tertiles.
Conclusions: Electronic health record analysis meaningfully improved cardiovascular risk stratification over conventional scores in essential hypertension, supporting external validation as a practical prognostic tool.
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