Cardiovascular diseases in China: Current status and future perspectives

Abstract

Despite revolutionary advancement in medicine over the past century, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death and disability in the world. Likewise, the morbidity and mortality of CVD in China are increasing persistently, although the government has taken an active part in the prevention and control of CVD. Here we present an overview regarding the current CVD status in China with respect to various disease phenotypes, as well as the anticipated future trend in accordance with the dynamics and distribution of pathogenesis in Chinese actual situations.

Keywords: Cardiovascular diseases; Epidemiology; Percutaneous intervention therapy.

Fig. 1

A Data from China Statistical Yearbook 2011 indicates the health expenditure of China from 2001 to 2009. Total health expenditure, government health expenditure, social health expenditure, and individual health expenditure as well as per capital health spending were on the increase year by year from 2001 to 2009 and total health expenditure and per capital health spending in 2009 were more than 3 times that in 2001, whereas government health expenditure in 2009 rose to over six times than that in 2001. Fig. 1B & C shows that the proportions of health expenditure had changed significantly between 2001 and 2009. In 2001, 60% of total health expenditure was taken up by an individual sector; in 2009, more than 60% of its finance came from the government and social sectors.

Fig. 2

Presented the prevalence of CVD risk factors: hypertension, smoking, dyslipidemia, diabetes, overweight, obesity and metabolic syndrome, in Chinese population. Besides the prevalence of smoking which had declined since 1996, all that remains showed a rising trend: that of dyslipidemia, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome with strong upward trend; that of hypertension, overweight, and obesity being moderately increasing.