Heart Disease and Cancer Deaths — Trends and Projections in the United States, 1969–2020
CDC STACKS serves as an archival repository of CDC-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other public health information authored or co-authored by CDC or funded partners. As a repository, CDC STACKS retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
i

Heart Disease and Cancer Deaths — Trends and Projections in the United States, 1969–2020

Filetype[PDF-425.55 KB]


English

Details:

  • Journal Article:
    Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)
  • Personal Author:
  • Description:
    Introduction

    Heart disease and cancer are the first and second leading causes of death in the United States. Age-standardized death rates (risk) have declined since the 1960s for heart disease and for cancer since the 1990s, whereas the overall number of heart disease deaths declined and cancer deaths increased. We analyzed mortality data to evaluate and project the effect of risk reduction, population growth, and aging on the number of heart disease and cancer deaths to the year 2020.

    Methods

    We used mortality data, population estimates, and population projections to estimate and predict heart disease and cancer deaths from 1969 through 2020 and to apportion changes in deaths resulting from population risk, growth, and aging.

    Results

    We predicted that from 1969 through 2020, the number of heart disease deaths would decrease 21.3% among men (–73.9% risk, 17.9% growth, 34.7% aging) and 13.4% among women (–73.3% risk, 17.1% growth, 42.8% aging) while the number of cancer deaths would increase 91.1% among men (–33.5% risk, 45.6% growth, 79.0% aging) and 101.1% among women (–23.8% risk, 48.8% growth, 76.0% aging). We predicted that cancer would become the leading cause of death around 2016, although sex-specific crossover years varied.

    Conclusion

    Risk of death declined more steeply for heart disease than cancer, offset the increase in heart disease deaths, and partially offset the increase in cancer deaths resulting from demographic changes over the past 4 decades. If current trends continue, cancer will become the leading cause of death by 2020.

  • Subjects:
  • Source:
  • DOI:
  • ISSN:
    1545-1151
  • Pubmed ID:
    27854420
  • Pubmed Central ID:
    PMC5127176
  • Document Type:
  • Volume:
    13
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:

You May Also Like

Checkout today's featured content at stacks.cdc.gov