Click here for NJ Preventive Cardiology practice brochure

A study (Simon C et al. Potential Reductions in the United States Coronary Heart Disease Mortality by Treating More Patients. Am J Card June 2009 - http://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(09)00600-6/abstract) analyzing only the CHD mortality in 2000, estimated that if only 60% of high risk Americans received recommended preventive medical therapy, there would have been 297,470 fewer deaths from heart disease alone. (Same treatment also prevents stroke.) More secondary prevention would have resulted in 30% fewer deaths, more primary prevention, 15% fewer deaths but more stents and heart bypass, only 1% less! Multiplied that by 10 years since we have already lost a entire decade. Multiply that by avoidable hospitalizations, procedures, disabilities, lost productivity and human suffering.

 

A blunt way of putting this data into its proper perspective is to say that every day, several jumbo jet loads of Americans crash to their death that is largely preventable and no one talks about it in the news.

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While health-care, more precisely - disease-care, generates the economic engine, it now accounts for 18% of the GDP and accelerating more quickly than the economic growth. What is the impact when disease care accounts for 25% of the GDP? In 2011, for every $1 the government spends, it borrows 40 cents. The escalating health care expenditure on disease-care for largely preventable diseases - heart attack and stroke, is not sustainable for much longer.