Cardiovascular diseases are still the most common cause of death in Germany. There are still large differences between the federal states. This is what the German Heart Report points out. Eastern states continue to have the highest mortality.
Many people are heart patients without knowing it, others have already survived a heart attack. The power plant of our life can be well cared for medically. Nevertheless, more people die from cardiovascular diseases than from Corona.
The most common cause of death in Germany is circulatory disorders due to narrowing of the coronary arteries, the so-called coronary heart disease (KHK). As a result, a total of 121,462 people died in 2020, as the current German Heart Report 2021 shows. 44,529 of them died of an acute heart attack.
CHD also caused the highest number of hospital admissions within a year (564,059 inpatient cases) and it is the leading cause of heart failure (heart failure). It killed 34,855 people in 2020.
“It is striking and gratifying that the mortality rate from heart disease and heart failure has fallen noticeably. A trend that has continued over the past few years. Both heart diseases are the main causes of sudden cardiac death with 66,000 deaths per year in Germany,” emphasized cardiologist Thomas Voigtländer, Chairman of the Board of the German Heart Foundation at the presentation of the current German Heart Report 2021.
A trend that has also persisted for years is the regionally very different distribution of cardiac deaths. The highest death rate (age- and sex-standardized) in one country for heart failure or CHD can be almost twice the lowest rate in another country.
A look at the death rate from CHD and heart attack shows that the eastern federal states continue to have the highest mortality rate. So had
From this point of view, the differences between regions in heart failure can be even greater. Countries with an increased heart failure mortality are Lower Saxony (50 per 100,000 inhabitants), Thuringia (49), Saxony-Anhalt (45) compared to Hamburg (25).
On the other hand, the gradient in the hospitalization rate (standardized by age and gender) is different: Saxony has the lowest hospitalization rates for CHD with 440 and heart attack with 177 inpatient admissions per 100,000 inhabitants, while the highest rate for CHD in Berlin with 784 and for heart attack in Saarland with 272 inpatient admissions per 100,000 inhabitants.
The heart report found major differences in the frequency of heart attack mortality between the individual federal states: the highest mortality from an acute myocardial infarction is found, in some cases similar to previous years, in the federal states of Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Saxony and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. !function(){var t=window.addEventListener?”addEventListener”:”attachEvent”;(0,window[t])(“attachEvent”==t?”onmessage”:”message”,function(t){if (“string”==typeof t.data
The majority of heart patients in Germany are over 65 years of age. According to the report, there is a very different frequency distribution in the group of older people, with a focus in central Germany. This essentially explains the increased number of heart diseases, such as heart attacks, which are recorded in the federal states of Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony.
The relatively lowest proportion of the population in the federal states are those aged 65 and over
These differences in the frequency distribution of those aged 65 and over are also not a new development, according to the heart report.
“The exact causes of these sometimes pronounced regional differences must be investigated more closely,” demands the Heart Foundation chairman. “What factors lead to a significantly lower average death rate in a federal state like North Rhine-Westphalia? Is it perhaps a higher density of cardiological care?”
In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, the death rates for coronary heart disease are only 113, for heart attacks 36 and for cardiac insufficiency only 32 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
It is striking that the lowest supply density with licensed cardiologists (compulsory medical care) is in the eastern federal states of Thuringia with 36,556, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with 30,392, in Saxony-Anhalt with 26,922 and in Brandenburg with 26,643 inhabitants per cardiologist.
“The extent to which this gap in care is an indicator of gaps in outpatient cardiological care and this could be the cause of higher morbidity and mortality is speculative and requires well-founded analyses,” explains Voigtländer. Analyzes of regional differences would also have to take into account influencing factors such as the proportion of smokers, employment status, frequency of concomitant diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.
Because everyone can do something for their own heart health. Among them, cardiologist Heribert Brück summarized the following for FOCUS online. This is especially true if you have already survived a heart attack.
