How can we estimate my personal heart risk to see if benefits still fit?

The short version: use a validated calculator, but know it overestimates, and at 73 the tools were never built for you.

The standard tool is the 2013 ACC/AHA pooled equation, which estimates 10-year risk of heart attack, stroke, or death from heart disease [3]. Its problem is calibration: in external validation it overestimated events, with observed-to-expected ratios of 0.66 in men and 0.76 in women [3]. In plain terms, it tends to hand you a risk higher than what actually happened. The 2023 PREVENT tool replaced it and dropped race from the inputs [3]. Neither was built for people over 79, and both excluded anyone with atrial fibrillation [3].

The calculator gives a number, not a verdict. A 10-year risk of, say, 15 in 100 means 85 in 100 avoid a hard event without any statin. The statin's relative cut then applies to that smaller absolute number, and the primary-prevention benefit shrinks with age: 26% relative in people over 70, with no significant drop in total deaths [1]. Muscle symptoms hit about 21 in 100 statin users versus 6 in 100 controls in one cohort, and risk rose with age over 60 and longer use [2].

My call: run PREVENT, not the old equation, and read the output as an upper bound, not a promise. Confidence: moderate.