Lifestyle changes lead to drop in heart attack deaths

NEW YORK: Healthier eating habits and a decline in smoking may explain a large share of the drop in heart disease deaths the UK has seen since the 1980s, a new study suggests.

Research has shown that since the 1980s, heart disease deaths have fallen by roughly one-half in many industrialized countries.

The relative importance of the various reasons for this decline is not fully clear, however.

A central question is whether “primary” or “secondary” prevention is more important. Primary prevention refers to the prevention of heart disease in healthy people, while secondary prevention means reducing potentially fatal complications like heart attack in people with diseased heart arteries.

Right now, the priority in the UK and the US seems to be on the latter, according to Dr. Belgin Unal of Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir, Turkey.

But in their study, Unal and his colleagues found that primary prevention was responsible for about half of the steep decline in heart disease deaths in England and Wales since 1981 — with diet changes and a reduction in smoking getting most of the credit.

All told, primary prevention was four times more effective at preventing deaths compared with treatment of existing heart disease, according to the researchers’ estimates, which were published online by the British Medical Journal.

Primary prevention works, Unal told Reuters Health, because it targets people who are generally healthy, encouraging smoking cessation and lifestyle changes to cut cholesterol and blood pressure before they rise too high. Medications are also part of preventing heart disease, but they are prescribed only after cholesterol and blood pressure climb to a concerning level. — Reuters