Interactive Tool: How Does Smoking Increase Your Risk of Heart Attack?

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Click here to find out how much smoking increases your heart attack risk.

This interactive tool measures how smoking—independent of other risk factors—affects your chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years. The tool uses the values you enter to calculate your risk. The information is based on the Framingham Heart Study. During the past 50 years, the Framingham Heart Study has studied the progression of heart disease and the risk factors of heart disease. The data were then developed into a risk assessment by the U.S. National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP), part of the National Institutes of Health. ¹

The values you enter include your age and gender. The tool uses a systolic blood pressure of 120 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg), an HDL cholesterol measurement of 55 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), and a total cholesterol measurement of 200 mg/dL to calculate your risk based on smoking alone.

In the real world, smoking has some additional negative effect on both cholesterol and blood pressure. If you smoke and also have other risk factors for heart disease, your risk may be higher than this tool says it is.

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	Smoking and risk of heart attack

Your score will appear in values from 1% to 99%. If your score is nonsmoker: 2% and smoker: 6%, it means that for your age and gender 2 of 100 nonsmokers compared with 6 of 100 smokers will have a heart attack in the next 10 years. In this example, smokers are 3 times more likely than nonsmokers to have a heart attack in the next 10 years.

If you are concerned about your score, talk to your doctor about lowering your risk for a heart attack. Quitting smoking may be the most important step you can take to reduce your risk of heart disease. According to the World Health Organization, the risk of coronary artery disease decreases by 50% in the first year after quitting. To learn more, see the topic Quitting Tobacco Use.

Adapted from the U.S. National Cholesterol Education Program's "Risk Assessment Tool." Available online: http://hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/atpiii/calculator.asp?usertype=pub.

Citations

1. Grundy SM, et al. (2001). Executive summary of the third report of the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (Adult Treatment Panel III). JAMA, 285(19): 2486–2497.