Heart disease will increase over next 20 years, heart association head says

The American Heart Association(AHA) predicts that about 40% of the U.S. population will have some type of cardiovascular disease.

AHA Chief Executive Officer Nancy Brown announced the organizations projections, based on a study on the future costs of care for hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart failure and stroke, at a Jan. 24 Newsmaker event at the National Press Club.

Cardiovascular disease remains the nation’s most prevalent and costly disease, amounting to 17% of total health expenditures and annual direct and indirect costs of $444 billion, Brown said. Based on these new projections, both the prevalence and overall cost of cardiovascular disease will increase dramatically, creating, what Brown termed, “a crisis of alarming proportion of which we are ill prepared to address as a nation.”

As the prevalence of disease increases, direct medical expenses and indirect costs, such as lost labor, will triple to over a trillion dollars annually, nearly equal to the current yearly federal deficit, Brown said.

More people are surviving cardiovascular disease than ever before. Citing the most recent statistics available (2007), Brown said that deaths from heart disease had fallen by 28% since 1997, while the death rate by stroke had decreased by 45%, largely attributed to advances in treatment.

Though a cause for celebration, Brown believes that, owing to the AHA’s projection of a rise in both prevalence and cost, “It would be a terrible mistake” to translate the drop in mortality rate as a victory in the war against heart disease.

At the same time that we are developing better treatments for cardiovascular disease the nation is seeing an ever-growing number of people requiring those treatments, Brown said.

With the first of 78 million baby boomers having coming into retirement age in 2011 the nation is reminded it is aging. “While cardiovascular disease can strike at any age,” said Brown, “it’s more prevalent in people aged 65 and over.”

Unhealthy behaviors such as those leading to obesity are on the rise and show no signs of abating, Brown said. This “frightening increase in obesity rates of US adolescents,” as Brown termed it, holds the potential for bumping up adult obesity rates up to 15 percent by the year 2035.

Obesity is also considered a primary contributor to hypertension, considered among AHA’s greatest challenges because it is difficult to detect, Brown said. Accounting for 18% of deaths in Western nations, hypertension is also considered the most costly of the four cardiovascular diseases featured in the AHA projections when direct medical costs are taken into consideration and, Brown said, will still be the most costly in 2030 when it reaches an overall price tag of $200 billion annually.