Short CommunicationBurden of heart disease in Greece: time to act
Introduction
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Europe,1 although mortality rates differ between countries, mainly due to changes in the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors (e.g. obesity, diabetes mellitus and smoking) over time.
Although cardiovascular mortality in Greece has decreased over time, the decline has been less than that seen in other European countries, with only 10% decline in Greece in the last 20 years (data up to 2006) compared with almost 36% decline in the European Union (EU)2 over the same time period. In addition, the burden of certain cardiovascular risk factors has persisted or even increased; the prevalence of smoking remains fairly high3 among Greeks, obesity4 and diabetes have increased, and there is a high rate of inactivity among adults.3
The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of heart disease in adults aged ≥50 years in Greece compared with 10 other European countries participating in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE Project, 2004/05).
Section snippets
Participants and data collection
For the purposes of this study, a subset of data from the SHARE Project (http://www.shareproject.org) was analysed. These data were collected from 26,743 individuals aged ≥50 years during the first wave of SHARE in 2004/05 in 11 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). Data were collected using computer-aided personal interviews (CAPI). One of the CAPI questions asked: ‘Has your doctor told you that you have … ’
Results
More than half of the study participants in 2004/05 (54.7%) were female, and 12.1% were aged ≥80 years. The overall prevalence of heart disease in the 11 European countries was 12.0% (95% CI 11.4–12.7), and the prevalence in Greece was 12.8% (95% CI 11.3–14.4). Greece ranked fourth highest for the prevalence of heart disease in males (14.6%, 95% CI 12.3–17.0) and third highest for the prevalence of heart disease in females (11.2%, 95% CI 9.5–13.5) (Fig. 1). The prevalence of heart disease was
Discussion
This study found that the prevalence of heart disease in both men and women is higher in Greece compared with other southern European countries, including Italy and Spain, and Greece ranks in the upper echelons for prevalence of heart disease in the 11 European countries studied. Such findings are in agreement with the most recent report of European cardiovascular disease statistics, in which Greece ranked third highest for hospital discharge rates from coronary heart disease in 2005, following
Acknowledgements
This study used data from SHARE Waves 1 and 2 Release 2.6.0, as of 29 November 2013. The SHARE data collection was primarily funded by the European Commission through the 5th Framework Programme (Project QLK6-CT-2001-00360 in the thematic programme Quality of Life), the 6th Framework Programme (Projects SHARE-I3, RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE, CIT5- CT-2005-028857, and SHARELIFE, CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and the 7th Framework Programme (SHARE-PREP, N° 211909, SHARE-LEAP, N° 227822 and SHARE M4, N°
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