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. 2021 Jun;51(6):495-503.
doi: 10.4070/kcj.2021.0097.

Korea Heart Disease Fact Sheet 2020: Analysis of Nationwide Data

Hyeok Hee Lee  1   2 , So Mi Jemma Cho  1 , Hokyou Lee  1   2 , Jongmin Baek  1 , Jang Ho Bae  3 , Wook Jin Chung  4   5 , Hyeon Chang Kim  1   6
Affiliations

Korea Heart Disease Fact Sheet 2020: Analysis of Nationwide Data

Hyeok Hee Lee et al. Korean Circ J. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. To provide an overview of the temporal trends in the burden of CVD, the Korean Society of Cardiology has published the Korea Heart Disease Fact Sheet in 2020.

Methods: We analyzed anonymized data of the Causes of Death Statistics, National Health Insurance Claims Database, and Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess mortality, hospitalizations, and risk factors for CVD.

Results: The CVD mortality decreased until 2010, then steadily increased up to 123 per 100,000 persons in 2018. Since 2002, the number and rate of CVD hospitalization have continued to grow. In 2018, approximately 12.1 million Korean adults had hypertension, 4.3 million had diabetes, 8.7 million had hypercholesterolemia, 14.9 million had obesity, and 8.8 million were currently smoking. The number of risk factors increased markedly with older age; 58.4% of adults age ≥70 years had ≥2 risk factors.

Conclusions: CVD mortality and hospitalization have gradually increased in the last decade, and a substantially high proportion of adults were carrying more than 1 cardiovascular risk factor in 2018. With the rapid population aging, a continued increase in CVD appears inevitable in Korea. Concerted and sustained approaches are essential to achieve early prevention and reduce the burden of CVD.

Keywords: Circulatory system; Heart diseases; Hospitalization; Mortality; Risk factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest relevant to this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Changes in cardiovascular disease mortality rate, 1983–2018.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Changes in the number of people hospitalized for cardiovascular disease, 2002–2018. Estimated based on (A) primary diagnosis and (B) all diagnoses during hospitalization.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Changes in cardiovascular disease hospitalization rate, 2002–2018. (A) Crude rate. (B) Age-standardized rate. Age-standardization was performed by direct method with the population structure of insured people in 2018 as a reference.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Number of Korean adults with each cardiovascular risk factor, 2018.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Number of cardiovascular risk factors by sex and age, 2018. (A) In all sex. (B) In men. (C) In women.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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