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- Posted August 11, 2025
Improved Calculator Predicts Stroke Risk For A-Fib Patients
A newly refined test can help detect which people with abnormal heart rhythms need treatment for an increased risk of stroke, researchers report.
Adding blood tests to an existing risk calculator can help doctors suss out which patients with atrial fibrillation would most benefit from blood thinners, according to findings published Aug. 6 in the Journal of Thrombosis and Hemostasis.
“This could be a game-changer for stroke prevention,” said senior researcher Dr. Mary Cushman, a professor of medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Vermont.
“We’re giving physicians a sharper tool to provide a personalized approach to anticoagulation for patients who need it most, while sparing others from unnecessary risk,” she said in a news release.
People with atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) have a fivefold increased risk of stroke, due to blood pooling and potentially clotting in the quivering upper chambers of their hearts, researchers said in background notes.
Doctors counter this risk by prescribing blood thinners, but the drugs themselves pose the risk of dangerous or uncontrolled bleeding, researchers said.
An existing risk calculator called the CHA2DS2-VASc helps doctors calculate stroke odds for A-Fib patients before prescribing blood thinners, but researchers said the score has limited capability and doesn’t account for important risk factors.
To improve the calculator’s usefulness, researchers evaluated nine blood tests to see whether they could predict stroke in 2,400 A-Fib patients.
Results showed that two blood tests for proteins associated with heart function and inflammation increased the CHA2DS2-VASc calculator’s ability to predict stroke, researchers said.
The research team has posted the improved calculator, now dubbed CHA2DS2-VASc-Biomarkers, online for doctors to use.
“This will help doctors better select patients for anticoagulation, potentially saving lives and reducing health care costs,” lead researcher Dr. Samuel Short, a hematology fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a news release.
More information
The American Heart Association has more on atrial fibrillation.
SOURCES: University of Vermont, news release, Aug. 6, 2025; Journal of Thrombosis and Hemostasis, Aug. 6, 2025
