The American Heart Association recently released a report in the journal Circulation that included updated data on the most common cardiovascular and circulatory diseases, their prognoses for 2023, as well as new insights into the trends in heart disease during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Background
The most recent statistics on cardiovascular disease risk factors related to the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential Eight, which includes healthy behaviors like diet, physical activity, weight, and smoking, as well as other contributing health factors like cholesterol, glucose levels, and blood pressure, are presented in the annual report by the American Heart Association in collaboration with other government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. For researchers, health advocates, politicians, and the general public looking for current and trustworthy information on cardiovascular health, this study is a crucial resource.
major discoveries
According to the American Heart Association research, 928,713 people would die from cardiovascular disorders in 2020, with 580,994 of those people being under the age of 85. Male and female fatalities were roughly equal in percentage. 696,937 people died from heart disease in 2020, and more than 400,000 of those deaths were in people under the age of 85.
Between 2013 and 2020, children in the United States (U.S.) between the ages of 16 and 19 had overall cardiovascular health scores based on the Life’s Essential eight components of 73.6, whereas adults had scores of 65.2. Male life expectancy increased by 5.5 years and female life expectancy increased by 4.2 years for those with higher cardiovascular health ratings. But because of the more than a million deaths brought on by COVID-19 between 2019 and 2020, the average life expectancy at birth fell from 78.8 to 77 years. In the United States, the cumulative COVID-19-related death rate was 392 per 100,000 in non-urban areas and 292 per 100,000 in metropolitan areas.
Although cigarette usage had generally decreased among American kids and adults by the year 2020, it was still more common among Alaskan Native, American Indian, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals than it was among White and heterosexual adults. Only 20.6% of children between the ages of 6 and 17 were active for more than 60 minutes every day in 2019 and 2020, according to the survey. Self-reported figures from 2018 show that 54.2% of individuals met the recommendations for physical activity, which are more than 150 minutes of moderate activity or more than 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week.
Diet or nutrition had one of the four lowest Life Essential scores, with scores ranging from 23.8 to 47.7 for various demographic groups. Diet scores were 61.1 and 28.5 for kids between the ages of 2 and 5 and 12 and 19 years, respectively. However, 19.8% of American children and adolescents between the ages of two and 19 were obese, while 36.8% of adolescents reported being overweight. The Hispanic male and non-Hispanic Black female youth showed the highest prevalence. Overweight or obesity was more common in persons over the age of 20: 71.2% and 41.4%, respectively.
Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels grew in adolescents between 2017 and 2020 in 5% of males and 4.6% of females, while in adults, LDL-C levels were high in 25.6% of men and 25.4% of women. Additionally, 50.4% of men and 43% of female U.S. adults over the age of 20 have hypertension, which translates to 122.4 million adults having high blood pressure in the country between 2017 and 2020.
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In addition, close to 29.3 million adults in the U.S. received a diabetes diagnosis based on statistics from 2017 to 2020. The most frequent (16.2%) and early cardiovascular complication of diabetes were found to be peripheral artery disease, which was followed by heart failure (14.1%), angina (11.9%), non-fatal myocardial infarction (11.5%), and stroke (10.3%).
Between 2017 and 2020, 48.6% of U.S. individuals over the age of 20 had cardiovascular diseases, which include coronary heart disease, heart failure, hypertension, and stroke. According to the mortality statistics for 2020, lower respiratory disorders and cancer were less common causes of death than heart disease and stroke. Between 2010 and 2020, the global mortality rates from cardiovascular illnesses increased by 18.71%.
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Conclusions
Overall, the detailed resource for healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, and interested citizens on a wide range of cardiovascular disease prevalence and mortality rates, risk factors, associated outcomes, as well as other serious health conditions like renal and metabolic diseases, is the comprehensive report by the American Heart Association with the updated statistics on heart disease and stroke.
