Why is preventive health care so important?
About half of all deaths from heart disease are sudden and unexpected, so there’s little opportunity for treatment. For people at risk of sudden death, prevention is the key. In 2001 an estimated 516,000 coronary artery bypass procedures were performed on 305,000 patients. If all heart attack-prone people were treated surgically, the cost would be prohibitive. Technological treatments for heart disease such as balloon angioplasty, thrombolytic therapy (clot-busting drugs), antiarrhythmic drugs and pacemakers aren’t cures. More importantly, such procedures can’t slow the buildup of fatty deposits in arteries (atherosclerosis), which causes most heart disease. And because of supply problems and other issues, heart transplants aren’t a realistic option for everyone with severe heart disease. That’s why more effort must be focused on prevention. Atherosclerosis often begins in childhood, but it may be decades before clinical disease shows up. We don’t fully understand all the causes of hea
