The number of deaths from heart attacks has halved in less than a decade, a new study has found.
Researchers say the dramatic decline has been sparked by fewer people smoking and improvements in hospital care.
Better management of high blood pressure and high cholesterol has also helped to cut the number of people having an attack.
Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), researchers from the Department of Public Health at Oxford said after studying over 860,000 heart attacks from 2002 to 2010, they found the death rate had fallen by about half.
The results showed there was a 50% drop in the number of men dying from an attack and a 53% drop in women.
The rate of occurrence of heart attacks also fell by 33% in men and 31% in women.
Overall, 61% of the people who experienced a heart attack were men, 36% of heart attacks resulted in death and 73% occurred in those aged 65 and over.
Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which funded the study, said the fall in death rates was “impressive”.
“This impressive fall in death rates is due partly to prevention of heart attacks by better management of risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol and due partly to better treatment of heart attack patients when they reach hospital,” he said.
“But far too many heart attack victims still die from a cardiac arrest before medical help arrives.”
He said many deaths could be prevented if bystanders performed “hands-only” CPR if they saw somebody suffering a heart attack.
The CPR technique is part of a new BHF television campaign – fronted by footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones – that aims to encourage people to pump on a victim’s chest to the beat of Stayin’ Alive without giving mouth-to-mouth.
Source : Orange News
