Thirty-year trends in mortality from cardiovascular diseases in Korea

Background and objectives: An understanding of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) mortality is important for the development of strategies aimed at reducing the burden of CVD. Thus, we examined the changing pattern of CVD mortality in Korea over 30 years (1983-2012) by analyzing the Cause of Death Statistics.

Materials and methods: Deaths from diseases of the circulatory system and those of five CVD categories were analyzed: total heart diseases, acute rheumatic fever/chronic rheumatic heart disease, hypertensive heart disease, ischemic heart disease (IHD) and atherosclerosis. To assess the effects of population ageing on CVD mortality, crude and age-adjusted mortality rates were calculated. Age-adjusted mortality rates were calculated by using the direct standardization method.

Results: Over the 30-year period analyzed in this study, circulatory system disease mortality markedly declined. The age-adjusted mortality rate decreased by 78.5% in men and by 76.3% in women. Consistent decreasing trends were observed for mortalities from rheumatic heart disease, hypertensive heart disease, and atherosclerosis. However, IHD mortality rapidly increased during the 30 years. Crude IHD mortality showed a steady increase until 2007, after which there were fluctuations. But the penalized regression splines showed that crude IHD mortality continued to increase. Age-adjusted IHD mortality peaked in the early 2000s, and started to decrease during the last few years.

Conclusion: In summary, total CVD mortality rate has significantly decreased over the 30-year period analyzed in this study but the IHD mortality rate has continuously increased until recently. The prevention and management of cardiovascular diseases amongst the Korean population, especially IHD, still represents a great challenge.