Science / Medicine : Heart Disease Death Rate Lowest in West

The Northeast and Midwest have the nation’s highest death rates from heart disease while the West has the lowest, Centers for Disease Control officials said last week.

The nation’s worst rate is in New York, where in 1985 320 out of every 100,000 men died of ischemic heart disease, which involves blockage of the arteries. The national average was 249; in New Mexico, the rate was 151 per 100,000.

The five worst states for men were New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Michigan and Ohio. The best rates were clustered near Chesapeake Bay and in the West. The five lowest heart disease death rates for men were in the District of Columbia, Hawaii, New Mexico, Maryland and Utah. For the most part, states with high heart disease death rates for men showed similar rates among women.

A likely cause of the state-by-state discrepancies, said Dr. Patrick L. Remington of the Centers for Disease Control, is the prevalence of cigarette smoking.

“These (Northeast and Midwest) states are the states that have high rates of cigarette smoking,” he said. “And we do know that cigarette smoking is the most important preventable cause of heart disease. Most deaths from smoking are heart attacks--not lung cancer.” In contrast, “the lowest rates of smoking are in the West,” he said.