Readers of the Saudi Heart Journal of will be familiar with the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) as the world’s most widely used cardiac surgical risk model (Nashef et al., 1999). Recent papers have cast doubt on the validity of this model, now more than 10 years old, for risk assessment in the second decade of the third millennium. It is worthwhile to pause and reflect a little on where we are now in relation to risk assessment.