Heart disease affects half of Americans, says study

Almost half of Americans have heart disease, a significant increase over prior years largely because of a newly expanded definition of high blood pressure, the American Heart Association (AHA) said Thursday.

The report in the journal Circulation found that 121.5 million adults in the US in 2016 “have some type of cardiovascular disease.”

By definition, cardiovascular disease includes coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke and high blood pressure.

In 2017, the AHA and American College of Cardiology updated the definition of high blood pressure as a reading of 130/80 mm Hg. Before, it was 140/90 mm Hg.

If high blood pressure were excluded from the new statistics, just 9 percent of US adults (24.3 million in 2016) would be classified as having cardiovascular disease.

Heart disease is the world’s leading killer, taking 17.6 million lives in 2016.

The global toll was down slightly from 2015, when 17.9 million lives were lost from heart disease.

In the US, the numbers are moving in the opposite direction.

About 80 percent of cardiovascular diseases can be prevented, through healthy lifestyle choices like diet, exercise, maintaining a healthy weight and not smoking; and by controlling high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, the AHA said.