[NOTE: A fair number of links are included in this post: AHA links to the American Heart Association, NIH links to the National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute, OTH links to Other Websites]Many people are surprised to learn that heart disease doesn't kill just older people, heart disease is one of the "Top 10 Causes of Death" in the U.S. at every age from newborns to those age to age 65 and over (see data above).
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From birth through age 14, the number of deaths due to heart disease is relatively low (there was a total of 761 deaths in the US in 2005 for this age range and most of those occurred during the first year of life). Also, the kinds of heart diseases that kill infants and children are quite different from those that kill people age 15 and older - e.g. congenital heart disease AHA NIH and infections that damage the heart AHA, OTH, etc.
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From age 15 to 24, kids grow into adults. They also start to develop and die from adult heart diseases - - not very many at first - - here are the statistics. In 2005, there were 1,119 heart disease deaths of individuals age 15-24 (all races, both sexes): 71 due to heart attacks, 41 due to high blood pressure, 122 due to chronic heart disease including heart failure, and 885 due to other diseases involving heart valves, the muscle of the heart, the pacemaker and conduction system of the heart, etc. By the way, it's this last type of heart disease that causes the sudden deaths you may have heard about when high school, college, or even professional athletes die unexpectedly during some sporting event. [I'll talk more about this in another post, "High School Sports Physicals Can Be A Joke".]
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Let's take a closer look at these deaths.
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NOTE: this post is still a work in progress
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1 comment:
Hey! I found it!!! =o) I am in your early morning Health class at RCC . . . This looks good, though the mortality chart was so tiny my old eyes had trouble reading it (Luckily I already had a copy of the chart from your handouts!)
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