New CVD Atlas shows wealthy countries have lesser cases of heart disease now

A new Global Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Atlas, launched by the World Heart Federation in its journal Global Heart, has shown that the burden of cardiovascular disease in wealthy countries is falling both in crude and age-standardised terms.

Meanwhile clusters of low-income and middle-income countries (LMIC) are seeing rises in their CVD burden as their populations continue to adapt to demographic and behavioural changes including increased life expectancy, poor diet, and in some cases increased tobacco smoking, and a more sedentary lifestyle.

The Atlas was prepared by a team including Assistant Professor Andrew Moran, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA; Assistant Professor Gregory Roth, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Professor Jagat Narula, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY, USA, and Dr George Mensah, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

"The Altas uses a measure called disability adjusted life years (DALYs) to measure the burden of CVD in each region and country in the world, and measure the differences between 1990 and 2010 based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Risk Factors, and Injuries 2010 Study. DALYs are a measure combining both premature deaths and years lived with disability", Dr. Narula, Editor-in-Chief of Global Heart said.

"While total CVD DALYs in any country or region show the absolute burden of CVD, the Atlas also includes DALYs per 100,000 people so that changes over time and differences among countries and regions can be compared," he said.

Worldwide, the CVDs contributing most to the total global burden of disease in 2010 were ischaemic heart disease (5.2 percent of all DALYs lost) and stroke (4.1 percent of all DALYs lost).

The other major CVDs included in the atlas were hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathies, rheumatic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, aortic aneurysm, peripheral vascular disease, and endocarditis.

"For both stroke and ischemic heart disease, global age-standardised mortality has decreased, but population growth and aging have increased both the absolute number of CVD deaths and survivors suffering with late effects of the two most important CVDs," the authors said.

In 1990, there were 5 211 790 deaths caused by ischaemic heart disease, which increased 35 percent to 7,029,270 in 2010. Stroke deaths (all types combined) also increased by 26 percent from 4,660,450 in 1990 to 5,874,180 in 2010.