Nationwide cardiovascular risk categorization: applying the European Society of Cardiology guidelines to the Swedish National Diabetes Register.

Type 2 diabetes, or T2D, causes blood sugar levels to get too high. Nearly one-third of people with T2D also have diseases of the heart and blood vessels, such as heart attacks and strokes. These are known as cardiovascular diseases or events. Some T2D medications can also lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Using data from national healthcare registries, we looked at how many people with T2D in Sweden had a very high cardiovascular disease risk. Healthcare systems often have limited budgets and may not treat all people with a very high cardiovascular disease risk. So, we looked at ways to identify which patients with T2D would benefit most from treatment. We also estimated how many cardiovascular events may be prevented by giving these patients cardiovascular risk-lowering T2D medication, using a medication called semaglutide as an example.The registry included 348 857 people with T2D, and 91.7% (320 028) were not given cardiovascular risk-lowering T2D medications. Of the people not given medications, 40.5% (129 512) had a very high cardiovascular disease risk. On average, we found that people with a very high cardiovascular disease risk and previous cardiovascular events ended up having more cardiovascular events than those without previous events. People who also regularly had high average blood sugar levels, measured using a marker in the blood called glycated haemoglobin, or HbA1c, had even more cardiovascular events.Giving semaglutide to people with a very high cardiovascular disease risk who have already had a cardiovascular event may prevent around 803 cardiovascular events each year.