Knowledge, attitude and barriers using atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ascvd) risk assessment calculator in management of dyslipidemia among primary health care providers

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk estimator is a recently developed online calculator tool for primary prevention. Family physicians, as first-line-soldiers, have close contact with local community patients making preventive care management an integral part of their routine work. Therefore, we would like to assess primary health care providers’ knowledge, attitude and barriers for using ASCVD risk estimator in a family health care facility.

This was a quantitative, cross-sectional, single-center study which took place at a tertiary health care facility between December 2018 and January 2019. An English-paper-based self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all primary health care physicians (n=172).

Most of the participants were using a different type of cardiovascular risk score calculator 128 (97.7%). Among these scores, ASCVD risk assessment calculator was the highest frequently used calculator 67 (51.1%) and Framingham risk score 43 (32.8%). Study participant preferred to use mobile application 102 (77.9%) as a technical method of risk score calculation. ASCVD knowledge was significantly related to participants’ clinical attitude (r=0.3, p-value=0.003) however, they have moderate knowledge about ASCVD risk calculator (61.7%), and only 37.3% have a positive attitude towards it.

Health promotion implementation needs using powerful primary prevention of cardiovascular risk calculators. Therefore, enhancing family physician knowledge and eliminate obstacles will gradually improve their attitude towards disease prediction and prevention.