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Cardiovascular disease is on the rise again, according to the latest annual report by the American Heart Association (AMA), which says that now nearly half of adults in the US have cardiovascular disease.
The results were published this week in the American Heart Association’s Heart and Stroke Statistics, reported in the Association’s journal Circulation.
The American Heart Association says that nearly 121.5 million adults in the United States, or 48%, have heart disease. This is a significant increase over the previous year. The statistics are largely dictated by a recent change in the way high blood pressure, or hypertension, is defined.
Anyone who now has a blood pressure reading of 138/80 or above is now considered to have high blood pressure, i.e., is “hypertensive.” Previously, the definition was 140/90.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death worldwide. And while worldwide deaths from cardiovascular disease declined, they increased in the US by about 4,100 to reach a total of 840,678.
Cardiovascular disease can include any one or all of several components including high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, heart failure or stroke.
If we exclude high blood pressure, which is what brings the majority of Americans under the classification of having CVD, then the prevalence of CVD among US adults is 9 percent.
Doctor Ivor J. Benjamin, who is the volunteer president of the American Heart Association said in the report that high blood pressure is “one of the most common and dangerous risk factors for heart disease and stroke.”
“Research has shown that eliminating high blood pressure could have a larger impact on CVD deaths than the elimination of all other risk factors among women and all except smoking among men,” Dr. Benjamin added.
Research has shown that almost 80 percent of all cardiovascular disease can be prevented by controlling high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.
