Conclusion
A SAGE score ≥7 identified Brazilian hypertensive patients with a high risk of PWV ≥ 10 m/s.
Methods
A retrospective cohort study. Patients underwent central blood pressure measurement using a validated oscillometric device from August 2020 to December 2021. A ROC curve was constructed using the Youden statistic to define the best score to identify those at high risk for PWV ≥ 10 m/s.
Results
A total of 212 hypertensive individuals were selected. The mean age was 64.0 ± 12.4 years and 57.5% were female. The following comorbidities were present: overweight (47.6%), obesity (34.3%), and diabetes (25.0%). Most of the sample (68.9%) had PWV < 10 m/s. According to Youden's statistic, a cutoff point of 6 provided the optimal combination of sensitivity and specificity for identifying patients with a PWV ≥ 10 m/s. This cutoff achieved sensitivity of 97.0%, and specificity of 82.9%. In clinical practice, however, a cutoff point of 7 (where score values of at least 7 were considered to indicate high risk) had a positive likelihood ratio of 8.2 and a negative likelihood ration of 0.346, making this the ideal choice by accurately excluding patients who are less likely to have PWV ≥ 10 m/s.