By Randy Dotinga HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, April 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Despite medical advances, a new study shows that more people are dying of heart disease and stroke worldwide than did a quarter century ago because the global population is growing, and growing older.
The good news is that the death rate -- the number of deaths in relation to the size of the population -- fell in most regions of the world.
The declining death rate reflects better diets, less tobacco smoking and improvements in medicine, said Dr. Simon Capewell, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Liverpool in England.
However, the numbers are still too high, said Capewell, who was not involved in the study.
"A lot of these deaths are premature, meaning they kill people below the age of 75," Capewell said. "Ninety percent of these premature deaths are preventable and avoidable through healthy diets and zero smoking."
In the study, researchers led by Dr. Gregory Roth, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, examined data from a 2013 global analysis of disease statistics from 188 countries. They focused on the numbers of cardiac deaths and death rates from 1990 to 2013.
In 1990, 12.3 million people died worldwide of heart disease, a category defined to include conditions such as heart attacks, stroke, rheumatic heart disease and aortic aneurysm, among others. The number grew to 17.3 million by 2013, an increase of 40 percent.
The study indicates that the increase is mostly due to the aging of the world's population, although population growth is another major factor. The number of deaths only declined in Western Europe and Central Europe, the investigators found.
Death rates are a different story. The researchers said that death rates by age fell by 39 percent worldwide.
Read more:
More People Dying of Heart Disease, Stroke Worldwide: Study