The aim was to review the most interesting articles dealing with estimations of an individual's absolute coronary heart disease risk based on the Framingham heart study. Besides the Framingham coronary heart disease risk functions, results of validation studies of these Framingham risk functions are discussed. In general, the Framingham risk functions overestimated an individual's absolute risk in external (non-Framingham) populations with a lower occurrence of coronary heart disease compared with the Framingham population, and underestimated it in populations with a higher occurrence of coronary heart disease. Even if the calibration accuracy of the Framingham risk functions were not satisfying, the Framingham risk functions were able to rank individuals according to risk from low-risk to high-risk groups, with the discrimination ability of 60% and more.