And while a major reduction in heart disease-related deaths occurred over the past three decades, experts say that the methods for prevention aren’t reaching the public.
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The conclusion of the study is that in the USA, one in two deaths caused by cardiovascular diseases among persons aged 45 to 79 could have been prevented.
The study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that, in 2010 in the United States, 54 percent of disease deaths among men and 50 percent among women could have been prevented, but only if they could’ve eliminated every case of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and smoking.
The American Heart Association makes several recommendations about how to prevent heart disease, including planning a healthy diet and workout routine.
Led by Shivani Patel, PhD, researcher in the Hubert Department of Global Health at Rollins School of Public Health, the team studied data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) national surveys from 2009 to 2010.
“This data reinforces the benefits of prevention and risk factor modification while saying that even with all the tools we have available we still are doing an inadequate job”, said Dr. David Frid, who specializes in preventive cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic and was not involved with the study. They also estimated, in a more feasible scenario, that if all states could have brought the levels of those five risk factors down to the levels achieved by the five best-performing states in the USA, that would have prevented about five percent of heart disease deaths. Although there were state-by-state variations in the amount of preventable fractions-southern states had the largest and western states had the smallest-of cardiovascular mortality, there is not a large different between the best-performing and worst-performing states. About 80 percent of people reported exposure to at least one of the five risk factors.
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“I think the message is that there is still room for improvement”, Gabriela Vazquez Benitez of Health Partners Institute for Education and Research in Minneapolis, Minnesota, told Reuters Health by email. It is the number one killer of both men and women in this country.
