Diabetes and atherosclerosis are the predominant causes of stroke and cardiovascular
disease (CVD) both in low- and high-income countries. This is due to the lack of appropriate
medical care or high medical costs. Low-cost 10-year preventive screening can be used
for deciding an effective therapy to reduce the effects of atherosclerosis in diabetes
patients. American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) recommended
the use of 10-year risk calculators, before advising therapy. Conventional risk calculators
are suboptimal in certain groups of patients because their stratification depends
on (a) current blood biomarkers and (b) clinical phenotypes, such as age, hypertension,
ethnicity, and sex. The focus of this review is on risk assessment using innovative
composite risk scores that use conventional blood biomarkers combined with vascular
image-based phenotypes. AtheroEdge™ tool is beneficial for low-moderate to high-moderate
and low-risk to high-risk patients for the current and 10-year risk assessment that
outperforms conventional risk calculators. The preventive screening tool that combines
the image-based phenotypes with conventional risk factors can improve the 10-year
cardiovascular/stroke risk assessment.
