Rates of heart attack, stroke falling in Canada: report

Canada is making progress in preventing heart attacks, according to a report released Thursday.

The Health Indicators 2009 report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information suggested therate of heart attacks in Canada (i.e. thenumber of people per 100,000 hospitalized for heart attacks) dropped 13 per cent between 2003-2004 and 2007-2008, after taking population growth and aging into account.

There were 251 hospitalizations for heart attacks per 100,000 people the first year, which dropped to 219 hospitalizations per 100,000 lastyear.

The rate of deaths from heart attack within 30 days of being admitted to hospital also dropped, decreasing by 11 per cent between 2003 and 2008.

The rates do not include Quebec because of differences in data collection, the institute said.

"There's some marked improvement," Helen Angus, vice-president of research at CIHI, said in an interview.

"The reduction in heart attack rate and stroke are really good news, but there are other areas where improvement has been more difficult or uneven across the country."

Changes in treatment, including less invasive procedures for treating heart conditions such as earlier angioplasty a procedure to widen blood vessels appear to be paying off, Angus said.

For the first time in 10 years of producing these reports, the institute looked at rates of new heart attacks by neighborhood incomes levels.

The heart attack rate for Canadians in the poorest neighbourhoods was 66 per cent higher than for those living in the most affluent neighbourhoods, according to the report.

Differences in the root causes of heart disease such as smoking, obesity and lack of physical activity are probably an important part of the explanation, said Angus.

She suggested the provinces target their efforts to lower income areas that are most likely to benefit from improving primary care, such astreatment of hypertension.

Researchers also found decreases in the rate of stroke hospitalizations over the last five years. That ratefell 14 per cent from 152 per 100,000 between 2003-2004 to 130 per 100,000 in 2007-2008.

Unlike with heart attacks, however, deaths within 30 days of admission to hospital from stroke have stayed relatively constant, said Dr. Indra Pulchins, CIHI's director of indicators and performance management.

"This is a signal that we may need to continue to look at how stroke care is managed," Pulchins said.

Research shows better outcomes when stroke patients are treated by specialist stroke teams, but the challenge is to organize stroke services in thismanner for morepeople, Angus said.

In a separatefindingunrelated to heart disease but published in the same report, researchers found thathospitalization rates for traumatic injury sustained through such things as falls, traffic accidents or assaults decreased nine per cent from 593 to 541 per 100,000 population between2001 and last year.

Fall-prevention campaigns targeting the elderly, with focus on such measures as installing grab bars, and greater awarenessabout the importance of not drinking and driving were an important part of the declininginjury trend, Angus said.