Ischemic heart disease: footprints through the data.

This study addresses the question of whether the rise in ischemic heart disease mortality has been just "a paper epidemic" as asserted in an earlier issue of this journal. Age-standardized death rates, proportions expected to die, mean ages at death, and cause specific contributions to changes in overall life expectancies were calculated for acute and chronic ischemic heart disease and for males and females for the years 1931 to 1980 using published vital statistics data. These multiple analyses reveal: a true epidemic of acute ischemic heart disease has occurred, affecting males exclusively or to a greater degree than females and it is now on the decline, fairly stable and more nearly comparable mortality for both males and females for chronic ischemic heart disease, and continuing problems of classification obscure the true levels of mortality for both the acute and chronic entities.