The World Heart Federation (2012) defines Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) as “a broad range of diseases that affect the heart and blood vessels” (n.p.). CVD is also known as Heart Disease (American Heart Association [AHA], 2015). According to Roger, Lloyd-Jones, Berry, et al. (2011) there are numerous types of cardiovascular diseases including: hypertension, coronary artery disease, congenital cardiovascular defects, stroke, congestive heart failure, atherosclerosis (hardening or narrowing of the blood vessels) and other diseases of the circulatory system. CVD is a significant issue in the United States (U.S.). The purpose of this paper is to raise the awareness of this serious crisis …show more content…
This can be shown by the morbidity and mortality rates, health care expenditure, access to health care for CVD patients, and the prevalence of this disease among sections of the population. In 2012, 26.6 million people were diagnosed with some form of CVD, which is 11.3% of the total adult population in the U.S. (Blackwell, Lucas, & Clark, 2014). The total health care costs for those patients with CVD in the United States in the same year was $101 billion, with the mean annual expenditure of $4,349 per person (Cohen, 2014). Meanwhile, the mortality rate in 2012 was 599,711deaths, which makes the CVD the leading cause of death among the American population (Murphy et al., 2015). Moreover, these diseases affect people of all ages, races and ethnicities (Mensah & Brown, 2007). Another factor that reflects the magnitude of this problem is the access to health care for CVD patients. According to AHA (n.d.), nearly one in five adult patients with CVD does not have access to health care because they lack medical …show more content…
According to the Office of Research and Women Health (2012), risk factors for CVD include hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity, old age, smoking and family history. These factors can be classified as modifiable and non-modifiable factors. In 2009-2010, 47% of American adults had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease (Fray, Chen, & Li, 2012). Many people think that CVD only affects the elderly, but that is not the case anymore, if it ever was. In 2009, approximately 150,000 people who were less than the age of 65 died from CVD (AHA, 2013). Therefore, preventing, controlling, and treating modifiable risks factor will play a vital role in preventing further increase in the morbidity and the mortality rate of CVD (World Heart Federation,