There have been “astonishing improvements” in the diagnosis, treatments, and results of heart attacks in Canada, but the gains could be lost as the population ages, gains weight and becomes increasingly sedentary. These are the results of a 60-year study by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
“The probability of surviving a heart attack is much better today than it was…30, 40 or 50 years ago,” says Dr. Paul Dorian, a cardiologist, professor and director of cardiology at the University of Toronto. In the 1950s the chances of survival in Canada were 65 per cent, compare to 95 per cent in 2014.
ListenDoctors are better at dealing with risk factors like high blood pressure and cholesterol. They have better medications, better procedures for surgery and better ways to get patients to improve their risks.
Rolling back the gains
However increasingly Canadians are overweight or obese and they are sedentary, and Dorian says that threatens to roll back the gains that have been made. “Those individuals that today are in their 20s, 30s or 40s are too young to have what we call manifest heart disease… they may be developing heart disease but the patients don’t know it yet.”
This is not just true in Canada, but is a trend in the rest of the world as well. The world is more urbanized, more people rely on motor vehicles for transport, more people work sitting at a desk, and leisure activities are more passive, says Dorian.
There is less time to cook and prepare food, so people eat outside the home where food contains high levels of fat and salt, and portion control is difficult. “The main problem is too much food and too little activity,” says Dorian.
As things stand today every seven minutes in Canada, someone dies from heart disease or stroke, and 1.6 million Canadians live with the effect s of cardiovascular disease.
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