Introduction:

Metabolic syndrome is a milestone within the research to assess better and optimally the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Objective:

To analyze the correlation between the predictive capacity for the global risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease of metabolic syndrome and the risk tables: Framingham Risk Score, the WHO/ISH and Gaziano tables, the PROCAM equation, and the QRISK2 algorithm.

Methods:

A documentary review was carried out, using national and international literature, especially published within the last five years. The Google Scholar search engine was used and open-access articles were consulted in the Pubmed and SciELO databases, from March 2020 to January 2021. The keywords used were síndrome metabólico [metabolic syndrome], riesgo cardiovascular global [global cardiovascular risk], método de estimación de riesgo [risk estimation method] and their English equivalents. The units of analysis were original review articles, including systematic reviews published in Spanish and English. Thirty-eight articles were selected (23 in Spanish and fifteen in English), 31 (81.5 %) of which correspond to the last five years.

Conclusions:

Metabolic syndrome and global risk estimation systems for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease should not be used as equivalents because their concordance, in general, is very questionable. Nevertheless, they can be considered a useful tool in the primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, as long as they do not replace clinical judgment and all possible exceptions or precautions are considered at the time of their application.

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