Jan. 21 (UPI) — More people die from heart disease and stroke than from anything else in the United States, despite a five-year decline, a study released Wednesday by the American Heart Association indicates.
Heart disease is the single greatest cause of death, while stroke has moved up to the fourth-leading cause of death, the association said in its 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update.
While ranking as the most common causes of death in the United States, heart disease and stroke have declined over the past five years.
“It’s encouraging to see that total deaths from heart disease and stroke declined,” said Dr. Stacey E. Rosen, volunteer president of the American Heart Association.
“The past five years appear to have been an anomaly given the huge impact the pandemic had on all health during that time,” Rosen said.
“The fact remains that heart disease and stroke continue to take the lives of too many of our loved ones each and every day,” he added. “Together, they still kill more people than the #2 and #3 causes of death.”
When combined, more than 25% of deaths in the United States are due to heart disease and stroke, while all types of cancer and accidents rank second and third, respectively, among the nation’s leading individual causes of death.
The updated statistics are based on 2023 data, which show 915,973 deaths from cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, stroke, hypertension and heart failure.
The number of cardiovascular disease deaths in 2023 is 25,679 fewer than 941,652 such deaths in 2022, which is a 2.73% decline in one year.
Coronary heart disease alone accounted for 349,470 deaths in the United States in 2023, which is down by 22,036 and 5.9% from 371,506 a year earlier.
Stroke caused 162,639 U.S. deaths in 2023, which is 2,754 and 1.7% fewer than 165,393 in 2022.
The American Heart Association said cardiovascular disease accounted for an average of one death every 34 seconds in 2023 and 218.3 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States.
Heart disease accounted for an average of one death every 3 minutes, and stroke accounted for one death every 3 minutes and 14 seconds in 2023.
“The good news is that, overall, fewer people are dying from any cause, and death rates are improving as life expectancy continues to rebound after the COVID 19 pandemic,” said Dr. Latha P. Palaniappan, American Heart Association volunteer chair of the statistics update writing committee and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University.
“However, about half of all U.S. adults continue to have some form of cardiovascular disease,” Palaniappan added.
“Those rates are still higher than they were before the pandemic and persistent increases in common conditions, like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, continue to drive the risk.”
