Gains ease on heart disease
The good news is that for decades, heart disease death rates have been decreasing.
The bad news? It’s still the leading cause of American deaths, and the rate of decrease has come almost to a halt.
A cardiology study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found from 2000 to 2011, heart disease death rates fell 3.7 percent each year. However, since 2011, the death rate from heart disease has fallen less than 1 percent each year, says the American Heart Association.
Researchers say obesity and Type 2 diabetes, both risk factors of heart disease, are most likely to blame for the stall in improvement.
Dr. Eric Wallace, a cardiologist at Kootenai Health, agrees the decrease in drop rates could be due to these health factors, but also thinks the fact the baby boomer population is reaching an age more at risk for heart disease could also play a part in it all.
“The aging population is growing, so you’re getting more and more people in their 60s and 70s where they’re having more heart disease,” he said. “Even though we’re still improving medical care and getting better at how we treat heart disease, people are still doing other things and not controlling their risk of heart disease such as smoking, tobacco use, high blood pressure and obesity.”
He also said Kootenai County is very representative of the national population, meaning what’s happening here is very likely to reflect something similar to what’s happening nationally.
The JAMA study also noted that if heart disease rates continued to decrease past 2011, deaths from heart disease would have fallen below deaths from cancer, the No. 2 cause of American deaths followed by chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries and stroke.
The American Heart Association set public health goals to “reduce the burden of cardiovascular diseases by 20 percent by 2020.”
The researchers wrote in their report that should current trends in heart disease continue, the U.S. may fall short of that goal. In order to achieve it, heart disease and stroke death rates would have to decrease by more than 2 percent every year from here on out.
Heart disease was responsible for 611,105 American deaths in 2013 and 614,348 deaths in 2014. Those numbers make up 23.5 and 23.4 percent of all American deaths, respectively.
“There is going to be a point with heart disease when we won’t be able to offer substantial benefits without changing our behaviours as a society, and really that’s going to depend a lot on prevention,” Wallace said. “The big thing is for people to take care of themselves, to stay active and eat healthy. If there’s any symptoms people have concerns about, they should seek medical attention and get it evaluated further. Don’t ignore symptoms that are new or that you may be concerned about.”