Each year close to 1.4 million people in the United States experience a heart attack and in excess of 500,000 die from it. Amazingly, 50 to 70 percent of those individuals who died from a heart attack were not aware of their risk. Worldwide, over 19 million people die from a heart attack each year.

Definition of a vulnerable patient:

Individuals who are at risk of a near future heart attack are called vulnerable patient. One way of characterizing this population is to define those with 5% or more risk of heart attack in one year. In other words, in 10 years one out of two vulnerable patients will definitely experience a heart attack.

By default, anyone with a history of prior heart attack is considered a vulnerable patient.

A single test to precisely identify a vulnerable patient remains to be discovered, however, the SHAPE Guideline illustrates the path to detect and treat the vulnerable population.