According to a report by Dr. Jack Tu it was found that geography played a vital role in determining the risk factors, treatments, and outcomes of heart disease for the more than 1.2 million Canadians.
Dr Tu is the Canadian Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Team (CCORT) Atlas Editor and Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences said that there is an East to West gradient in terms of the death rate from heart disease. Canada has about 33 million people spread over 6,000 miles. Hence the health facility in every place differs widely. He said that people in rural areas are disadvantaged that those in the cities. Dr. Andreas Wielgosz of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and CCORT collective said that the people in the West are more heart-healthy.Atlantic Canadians were most at risk from heart disease, along with people living in rural Ontario. Provincial cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality rates ranged from a high of 320.6 out of every 100,000 to 196.9 out of every 100,000. Dr. Blair O'Neill, head of cardiology at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Halifax agreed to Tu statement that certain regions have the highest heart disease mortality rates due to the factors such as high smoking rates, high obesity rates, higher rates of diabetes, those who lead a very low socio-economic lifestyle and hypertension.
The study said that additional investments in understanding the determinants that are vital towards improving the cardiac health status of Canada s essential. Employment status and education levels play an important role in providing health benefits to Canadians across the country. Tu said that it was shocking to find that cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of death in Canada contributing to about 37 % of all deaths in the country.
Another important issue is that there is significant variation in the rates of cardiac procedures and cardiac drug distribution across Canada such as policy differences, physician practice styles, and possibly patient preferences. Hence to set right things the Canadian Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Team issued several guidelines such as the implementation of a national cardiovascular surveillance system, funding should be made available to improve the quality and quantity of health system and joint effort should be taken by the federal and provincial governments to ensure all Canadians have similar levels of access to current cardiovascular treatments. "The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is working its way to make all this possible for the Canadian heart patients.
