- About half of people in the United States don’t know that the top killer in their country is heart disease.
- The death rate from heart disease has crept upward in recent years.
- Experts say slow progression, denial, and misplaced skepticism contribute to the lack of knowledge about the disease.
Heart disease has been the
More than half of Americans still don’t know it.
A new
The poll, released alongside the
“Heart disease along with stroke, which is the fifth leading cause of death, claims more lives in the U.S. than all forms of cancer and chronic lower respiratory disease combined, based on the most recent data available,” said Dr. Joseph Wu, the president of the American Heart Association, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, and professor of medicine and radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine in California, in a press release. “So, the results of this survey, finding that most people do not know the significant impact of heart disease, is discouraging and even a bit frightening.”
The report noted that the lack of awareness of heart disease mortality contrasts with the fact that nearly half of all Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease, including coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, and high blood pressure.
Since 1950, death rates from cardiovascular disease have declined 60% but have recently trended upward. Most of the deaths are attributed to high blood pressure. In the past decade, the…
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