Heart disease kills more people than any other cause in the United States, according to recent data provided by the American Heart Association (AHA) in its annual update published on Jan. 27.
The association found that in 2022, which is the most recent year data was available, 941,652 died from cardiovascular disease across the United States, or an increase of more than 10,000 deaths from the previous year. It means that heart disease kills 224.3 per 100,000 people in the United States.
The number of heart disease deaths reported in the 2022 data outpaced the number of deaths from cancer, accidents, and COVID-19.
AMA head Keith Churchwell noted that someone in the United States dies every 34 seconds from cardiovascular disease.
“Too many people are dying from heart disease and from stroke which remains the 5th leading cause of death. Together, they kill more people than all cancers and accidental deaths—the No. 1 and No. 3 causes of death—combined,” he said in a statement.
Heart disease risk factors are likely to increase in the coming years, the association said.
That’s because factors such as high blood pressure and obesity are still rising, said the AHA. Around 180 million people could be impacted by obesity or hypertension, or high blood pressure, by the year 2050.
As of 2022, around 47 percent of American adults have high blood pressure, more than 72 percent are at an “unhealthy weight,” and around 57 percent have pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes, the organization also noted. People with Type 2 diabetes are associated with a higher risk of developing heart disease than those without the condition, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“In the update, we noted calculations that found excess weight contributes to as many as 1,300 additional deaths per day in the U.S., nearly 500,000 per year. It lowers life expectancy by as much as 2.4 years compared to a healthy weight,” AHA committee member Latha Palaniappan said in the statement.
She said that “excess weight now costs us even more lives than smoking,” noting that smoking rates have dropped in recent years. “Being overweight is the new smoking when it comes to health threats.”
The AHA report noted that one of the biggest factors in heart disease is an unhealthy diet, noting that “although average diet quality has slightly improved in the past 10 years,” Americans still score relatively low on their diet quality.
The NIH recommends people get regular testing for heart disease starting at age 20, namely if a person has a family history of heart problems. Those screens include blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol tests. Children who have low levels of physical activity, obesity, or a family history of heart issues also might need screening, it says.
Around 40 percent of American children are considered to be at an unhealthy weight, with about 20 percent having obesity, according to the AHA report.
The one positive trend in the AHA report was that Americans have stopped smoking by significant margins over the past 60 years or so. In 1965, about 51 percent of men and 35 percent of women smoked, respectively. But as of 2018, 15.6 percent of men smoked and 12 percent of women smoked, respectively.