Existing short-term risk assessment strategies in acute myocardial infarction are limited to Western populations.

We have proposed risk models for predicting mortality after acute myocardial infarction on the basis of the geographically diverse HERO-2 trial. HERO-2 randomised 17,073 patients to either unfractionated heparin or bivalirudin in conjunction with streptokinase to treat ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction. Patients were recruited from 46 countries from Europe, Russia, North America, Latin America and Asia, including Australia and New Zealand.

We also examined variations in outcomes across geographical regions and propose new methods for comparing the calibration and ranking performance of risk strategies.