The Progetto Cuore - epidemiology and prevention of ischaemic heart diseases - launched in 1998, is financed by 1% of the National health fund and is coordinated by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità.

The aims of the project were to:

• estimate the impact of cardiovascular diseases in the general population through indicators like prevalence, attack, incidence and mortality rates
• evaluate the distribution of cardiovascular risk factors in representative samples of the Italian population
• evaluate the cardiovascular risk in the Italian population.

The first objective has been partly achieved through the implementation of the National Register of coronary and cerebrovascular events; the second objective has been achieved thanks to the setting up of the Osservatorio Epidemiologico Cardiovascolare; the third objective has been reached through the risk chart tables and the calculation of the risk score. Furthermore, a bank of biological samples preserved at low temperature has been set up.

The project is going on and the collected data are periodically updated and made available to the scientific community on this website.