Alarmist inaccuracies distort true progress
The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) this week carried a story, released widely in the media, implying drastic slippage in Canadians' cardiovascular health status. Douglas S. Lee and colleagues on the Canadian Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Team reported that, from 1994 to 2005, 19% more Canadian men suffered from heart disease (and 2% more women). They conclude: There is an increasing prevalence of heart disease and risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Canada."
Everyone would love to report that no Canadians suffer heart disease, of course, but the researchers report nearly all groups in Canadian society suffering "significant" increases in heart disease and the "risk factors" which predict adverse health outcomes. Trouble is: that's not what their data really showed.
The Canadian population is split nearly evenly between males and females (49.6%/50.4%) so the 19% increase in heart disease among men and 2% among women comes out to about a 10.5% population average increase over the 12 year period. But Canada's population during those years grew from 29 million to more than 32.6 million, an increase of 12.5%. So, actually the rate of heart disease in Canada has actually continued to improve. Two years ago, our Salt and Health (pdf 500.04 kB) newsletter displayed these figures graphically (see Figure 5).
It's unfortunate that journalists didn't look deeper than the news release and author-prepared abstract for the real story.
The authors are concerned about trends in recognized risk factors that run directly counter to the pattern in heart disease incidence. Diabetes, hypertension and obesity are all on the rise, though, regarding obesity, Canada seems the reverse of most other developed societies where obesity is more common in lower socio-economic groups; that trend is exactly reversed among Canadians.
The authors' primary concern is that risk factors among the young are a cautionary finding for future trends, but they give short shrift to the dramatic and long-term gains that their study documents.
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