The trends in cardiovascular disease over the past 50 years are a success story for public health and medical progress. Even as demographic aging leads to more older people suffering more age-related disease, the risk for any given individual of suffering the most severe outcomes of cardiovascular disease has fallen. Still, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease remains the single largest cause of human mortality, and the growth of obstructive atherosclerotic plaque in arteries remains largely irreversible. For every fortunate individual who experiences some plaque regression with an aggressive combination of lifestyle change and medication, there are many more who see no benefit. As severe outcomes such as heart attack have declined in incidence, deaths now occur as a result of other consequences of atherosclerotic plaque. New approaches and better therapies are much needed.
While heart disease has been the leading cause of death in the U.S. for over a century, the past 50 years have seen a substantial decrease (66%) in overall age-adjusted heart disease death rates, including a nearly 90% drop in heart attack deaths, according to new research. During that time, there have been major shifts in the types of heart disease people are dying from, with large increases in deaths from heart failure, arrhythmias, and hypertensive heart disease.
In an analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers reviewed the age-adjusted rates of heart disease deaths among adults ages 25 and older from 1970 to 2022. Over this 52-year period, heart disease accounted for nearly one-third of all deaths (31%). During this time, heart disease death rates decreased substantially, from 41% of total deaths in 1970 to 24% of total deaths in 2022. In 1970, more than half of all people who died from heart disease (54%) died because of a heart attack - a type of acute ischemic heart disease. The age-adjusted death rate decreased 89% by 2022, when less than one-third of all heart disease deaths (29%) were caused by a heart attack. Conversely, during this time, the age-adjusted death rate from all other types of heart disease (including heart failure, hypertensive heart disease and arrhythmia) increased by 81%, accounting for 9% of all heart disease deaths in 1970 and 47% of all heart disease deaths in 2022.
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