Epidemiology and Current Status of Major Cardiovascular Diseases: Were they Hidden and Now, have been Diagnosed in India?

Abstract

Technological and economical advancement have resulted in dramatic improvement in the health status of people in last half century. However, with these development and advancement, majority of developed and developing countries are now facing a heavy burden of disease of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and cancer. As per the WHO, about 17 million people die every year by CVDs worldwide, particularly heart attacks and strokes. The high mortality alone is a major staggering burden of CVDs, but is only part of the picture. The rest of the picture is also filled with economic burden and individual’s struggle with the complications of CVDs. India is one of these countries where large number of CVDs patients are struggling for life and spending a lot for the same. However, the high prevalence of CVDs in India may be as a result of increased awareness and availability of diagnostic procedures (especially for coronary heart diseases (CHDs)). CHDs and other CVDs might have been prevalent for past many years and may have not been diagnosed in this large population. In this article, we are going to describe the worldwide epidemiology of CVDs with brief outline of the same in developing countries and in our country, India. Through this article, we would like to appeal and remind the epidemiology researchers that the awareness and the availability of diagnostic procedures of CVDs (Especially for CHDs) were very less in past and this factor is to be kept into consideration before drawing any certain conclusion on comparison of past and present prevalence of CHDs and CVDs in India.