Decline in Heart Disease Deaths Slows in '90s
Decline in Heart Disease Deaths Slows in '90s
Sept. 28, 1999 (Washington) -- It's become almost axiomatic that the number of people dying of heart disease is headed in the right direction: down. However, that orthodoxy is being challenged by data emerging from the two-and-a-half-day National Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention here, aimed at meeting a number of national public health goals by the year 2010. Is it possible that the death rate from heart disease could start to climb back up?
"In the '90s, the [rate of death from heart disease] went down over 11%, but in the '80s, it went down over 25%. And the decade before that it went down 25%. So, it's not to say that [heart disease] is not declining ... but it's not going down as rapidly as it did before," Edward Sondik, PhD, tells WebMD.
Sondik, director of the national center for health statistics at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in Atlanta, says that the sobering data should cause Americans to rethink their prevention strategies. "This slowing is a challenge, and I think it requires research, but it also requires looking at how people have been changing their behavior, whether they've been changing," says Sondik.
Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the U.S., claiming nearly 500,000 lives annually. According to the experts, modifying such well-known risk factors as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, obesity, inactivity, and smoking are crucial preventive strategies. Sondik also says that there needs to be a much better statistical handle on actual heart disease rates, something comparable to the cancer registry.
Looking at the numbers on stroke is even more discouraging, says Sondik. "There really is a remarkable change. ... [Deaths from stroke have] gone from a fairly steep decline into essentially a flat mode, and it's hardly going down at all [now]," says Sondik.
It's estimated that some 158,000 Americans die from stroke every year, making it the number-three overall killer. "I consider any kind of change like that a wake-up call," says Sondik.
So does Thomas Pearson, MD, the conference chair and a professor of community and preventive medicine at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center. "We've gotten kind of hooked on a 2.5% [annual] decline in cardiovascular disease ... and that's an assumption that we're going to have to question," Pearson tells WebMD. "To say that it's not possible that the rates would go back up would be presumptuous." Like Sondik, Pearson lays at least part of the blame for the unsettling trend on prevention failures -- in many cases after high-tech treatment.
Decline in Heart Disease Deaths Slows in '90s
Sept. 28, 1999 (Washington) -- It's become almost axiomatic that the number of people dying of heart disease is headed in the right direction: down. However, that orthodoxy is being challenged by data emerging from the two-and-a-half-day National Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention here, aimed at meeting a number of national public health goals by the year 2010. Is it possible that the death rate from heart disease could start to climb back up?
"In the '90s, the [rate of death from heart disease] went down over 11%, but in the '80s, it went down over 25%. And the decade before that it went down 25%. So, it's not to say that [heart disease] is not declining ... but it's not going down as rapidly as it did before," Edward Sondik, PhD, tells WebMD.
Sondik, director of the national center for health statistics at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in Atlanta, says that the sobering data should cause Americans to rethink their prevention strategies. "This slowing is a challenge, and I think it requires research, but it also requires looking at how people have been changing their behavior, whether they've been changing," says Sondik.
Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the U.S., claiming nearly 500,000 lives annually. According to the experts, modifying such well-known risk factors as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, obesity, inactivity, and smoking are crucial preventive strategies. Sondik also says that there needs to be a much better statistical handle on actual heart disease rates, something comparable to the cancer registry.
Looking at the numbers on stroke is even more discouraging, says Sondik. "There really is a remarkable change. ... [Deaths from stroke have] gone from a fairly steep decline into essentially a flat mode, and it's hardly going down at all [now]," says Sondik.
It's estimated that some 158,000 Americans die from stroke every year, making it the number-three overall killer. "I consider any kind of change like that a wake-up call," says Sondik.
So does Thomas Pearson, MD, the conference chair and a professor of community and preventive medicine at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center. "We've gotten kind of hooked on a 2.5% [annual] decline in cardiovascular disease ... and that's an assumption that we're going to have to question," Pearson tells WebMD. "To say that it's not possible that the rates would go back up would be presumptuous." Like Sondik, Pearson lays at least part of the blame for the unsettling trend on prevention failures -- in many cases after high-tech treatment.
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