The 2016 European guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in clinical practice is a consensus document that, by meeting the requirements of an evidence-based approach in medicine, provides recommendations, by taking into account the results of researches. The 2016 edition demonstrates important differences with respect to the ways of identifying subclinical atherosclerosis when determining the total cardiovascular risk (CVR): the use of biochemical markers, including high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and the estimation of the intima—media thickness (IMT) are not recommended. The purpose of this article is to identify the possible causes of these changes. A number of foreign clinical trials and large metaanalyses have estimated the benefits of adding data on hsCRP levels and IMT to traditional cardiovascular risk factors in assessing CVR. Most of the data suggest that hsCRP and IMT are of very moderate predictive value for only a group of intermediate CVR patients.