Why the study?
Calcific aortic valve disease exhibits the fastest-growing mortality and disability-adjusted life years among non-rheumatic heart valve diseases, warranting an overview of 30-year global trends and modifiable risk factors.
There are widening global health disparities in CAVD mortality and DALYs, with improvements largely restricted to high-SDI regions.
Disparities in CAVD mortality trends may reflect unequal access; leaves open drivers of stagnant burden in low-SDI regions.
Background: Non-rheumatic heart valve disease (NRVD) is a common cardiovascular disease, whereas calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is a type of disease with the fastest-growing mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). This study presents an overview of the trends noted in the DALY, CAVD mortality, and the modifiable risk factors in the last 30 years, across 204 countries and territories, and their relationship with the period, age, and birth cohort. Methods: Data were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 database. An age-period-cohort (APC) model was used to assess general annual percentage changes in DALYs and mortality over the past 30 years in 204 countries and territories. Results: In 2019, the age-standardized mortality rate for the entire population in areas with a high socio-demographic index (SDI) was more than 4 times higher than that in low-SDI areas. From 1990 to 2019, the net drift in mortality for the whole population was from -2.1% [95% confidence interval (CI): -2.39% to -1.82%] per year in high-SDI regions to 0.05% (95% CI: -0.13% to 0.23%) per year in low- to medium-SDI regions. The trend of DALYs was similar to that of mortality. The age-wise distribution of deaths exhibited a shift toward older populations in high-SDI regions globally, except for Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Over time, in most medium, medium-low, and low SDI regions, there was no significant improvement in the period and birth cohort or even an unfavorable or worsening risk. The main variable risk factors of CAVD death and DALYs lost were high sodium diet, high systolic blood pressure, and lead exposure. Those risk factors only showed a significant downward trend in middle- and high-SDI regions. Conclusions: Health disparities between regions for CAVD are widening and could lead to a heavy disease burden in the future. Health authorities and policymakers in low SDI areas, in particular, need to consider improving resource allocation, increasing access to medical resources, and controlling variable risk factors to stem the growth of the disease burden.
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Liu et al. (2023) studied this question.
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