Figure 1: The risk factors affecting the prevalence of Coronary Heart Disease in Australia
(extracted from [2] and [3])
Modifiable Risk Factors Non-Modifiable Risk Factors
Diet, containing saturated fat and salt Increasing age
Hyperlipidemia Gender
Excessive alcohol and tobacco use Family history
Psychological stress Heredity
According to Figure 2 (Page 2), the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) observed a 73% decrease in mortality caused by CHD, between 1968 and 2011 [4]. More specifically, …show more content…
The charity provides guidelines for the management of CHD, including: lifestyle, biomedical and psychosocial factors [19]; thus providing standard clinical measures for effectively managing the disease [19]. In 2012, the NHF allocated 50% of its research determining the impact of its recommendations in clinical practice [20]. Accordingly, the NHF started to provide personal lifestyle sessions for patients, consulting patients about minimising and preventing risk factors [21]. As a result, the refining of clinical practices associated with CHD consultation and management caused mortality to decrease by 2%, between 2011 and 2013 [20]; thus inferring that the NHF was successful in improving clinical standards, which aim to prevent …show more content…
Amongst the top five causes of deaths in 2013, the occurrence of CHD-caused deaths (35.4%) were proportionally greater than: dementia (19.6%), cerebrovascular disease (18.9%), lung cancer (14.7%) and chronic pulmonary disease (11.5%) [22]; therefore, inferring that CHD is still highly prevalent in Australia. Furthermore, the NHF [19] reported of the need to minimise and educate sufferers about risk factors, as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption still remain heavily linked to the condition [19]. This provides an explanation for an estimated 17.0% increase in CHD-related deaths by 2045, despite the recent decline in the disease’s prevalence [20].
As a result, the establishment of the NHF and the KVC project have successfully suppressed the mortality rate of CHD. However, as stated by Peiris et al. [15] further financial investment is still required to significantly “[close] the “gap” [16] between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and modifications in the approach to educate sufferers must be implemented, to minimise the prevalence of CHD in the