Jamal Rana, Assistant Physician in Chief (Chair) at The Permanente Medical Group, and Professor in the Department of Clinical Science at Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, shared a post on X about a paper he co-authored with colleagues published in JACC: Advances:
“So what are the top 2 killers of people in the USA? It’s Heart Disease and Cancer. Hot off the press from JACC: Advances. I do not say it lightly when I think this is a crucial analysis.
Population-level data from CDC WONDER showed substantial reductions have been observed in the Age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) attributable to ischemic heart disease (IHD) and multiple screenable cancers; however, the rate of these improvements has slowed considerably for IHD mortality in men and women, with even a slight increase in mortality being observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of note, among men in 2024, the AAMR for IHD was more than 3 fold higher than that of lung cancer and higher than the rates for the three leading screenable cancers combined.
Similarly, for women in 2024, the AAMR for IHD was nearly 2.2 times higher than that of lung cancer and equal to the combined rates of the three leading cancers.
These findings highlight the persistent gap between IHD and cancer mortality, as well as the need for additional clinical and public health approaches to enhance current screening practices for IHD and further implement evidence-based strategies for averting preventable cardiovascular deaths.
With a plethora of preventive therapies showing the benefit of early aggressive lipid-lowering, the ability to impact global mortality with early screening and diagnosis is tremendous.
An entry criterion for VESALIUSCV trial was CAC≥100, with evidence of 25% risk reduction with evolocumab.
Further, 19-20 million non-cardiac chest CT scans, including for lung cancer screening, are done annually in the U.S., afford an opportunity to measure CAC and implement therapeutics accordingly to prevent future IHD.
Thanks to co-authors.”
Title: Trends in Mortality Associated With Ischemic Heart Disease and Screenable Cancers in the United States, 1999 to 2024
Authors: Jamal S. Rana, Reed Mszar, Eugenia Gianos, Matthew J. Budoff, Khurram Nasir, and Mushood Ahmed.
You can read the Full Article in JACC: Advances.
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