Heart Disease Costs Put at $78 Billion

Treatment of heart and circulatory disease, by far the country’s main cause of death, will cost an estimated $78.6 billion this year, the American Heart Assn. said Sunday.

“That’s a real figure, and it’s going up,” said Dr. Thomas J. Ryan, president of the association.

The estimate equals about $325 for every person in the country.

The costs include $48.2 billion for hospital and nursing home services, $13.6 billion for lost work time due to disability, $11.8 billion for doctor bills and $5 billion for medicines.

Last year, the association estimated that these diseases, which include heart attacks, high blood pressure and strokes, cost $72.1 billion.

The cost figures were in the annual brochure, “Heart Facts,” released at a science writers’ forum sponsored by the association.

Cardiovascular diseases kill twice as many people each year as cancer and 10 times as many as accidents.

In 1983, the last year for which accurate figures were available, 989,400 Americans died from heart and circulatory diseases, compared to 440,620 who died from cancer and 91,290 from accidents.