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| Prevention According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer in the United States, for both men and women, claiming more than 930,000 lives each year. CVD, which includes heart disease and stroke, claims more lives each year than the next five leading causes of death combined - cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents, diabetes mellitus and influenza and pneumonia. (Source: AHA). While avoiding key risky behaviors—such as smoking—and leading a healthy lifestyle are certainly important aspects to preventing heart disease, there are other factors—such as family history—that play a strong role in heart disease risk that we simply have no control over. Despite advances in the treatment of existing late stage heart disease, there has been amazingly little progress in the identification and prevention of heart disease. How is heart disease usually identified today? That’s how 50 percent of all Americans find out that they have heart disease. Even people who lead healthy lifestyles, have low cholesterol and pass annual physicals with glowing reports can suffer a life-threatening or fatal heart attack. In fact, more than one third of Americans do not survive their first heart problem—that’s about 150,000 Americans each year. A technology exists and is available today that can turn the tables in the battle against heart disease, but it won’t happen unless Americans are aware of EBT technology, physicians understand it and insurance companies move towards greater coverage of this proven prevention technology. |