{"id":230477,"date":"2026-01-13T01:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/230477\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T01:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:36:13","slug":"pandemic-appears-to-have-accelerated-a-long-brewing-reversal-in-us-heart-failure-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/230477\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic appears to have accelerated a long-brewing reversal in US heart failure deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">The pattern reflects a convergence of forces rather than a single cause, said co-author Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University cardiologist and the journal\u2019s editor-in-chief. <\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">Rising cardiometabolic risk factors have been appearing earlier in life for years and didn\u2019t pause during the pandemic, while disruptions in care, delayed diagnoses, and fragmented follow-up left some patients more exposed, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWhat we are seeing reflects a mix of worsening cardiometabolic risk, structural and health system failures, and the lingering effects of pandemic-era disruption, rather than a new biology per se,\u201d Krumholz said in an email.<\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">Nationally, age-adjusted heart failure death rates declined from 1999 through to about 2011 before reversing course. <\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">The rise accelerated during the early Covid period and has persisted, with particularly steep increases among adults aged under-65, men, black people, rural populations, and residents of the South and Midwest US, the report found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">Heart failure was listed as the underlying cause of more than 92,000 US deaths in 2024 and as a contributing cause in over 423,000 others, according to the National Centre for Health Statistics. <\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">Mortality rates were highest among older adults, but the sharpest increases occurred in younger and middle-aged groups &#8211; an unusual shift that has unsettled cardiologists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">The findings add to evidence that the pandemic\u2019s cardiovascular toll didn\u2019t end when hospitals reopened or vaccines arrived. <\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\">If heart failure mortality continues to rise, it risks becoming a dominant driver of post-pandemic heart disease deaths, threatening to reverse decades of progress &#8211; especially for populations already bearing the highest burden of chronic illness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"vUWuwjCGukMuO\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\">Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/subscription\/offers\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/subscription\/offers\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pattern reflects a convergence of forces rather than a single cause, said co-author Harlan Krumholz, a Yale&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116060,16425,8607,15166,17898,15152,42343,305,134,2862,78,5511,14910,23951,111,139,69,13218,384,137248,61,3040],"class_list":{"0":"post-230477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-accelerated","9":"tag-appears","10":"tag-covid","11":"tag-deaths","12":"tag-didnt","13":"tag-directly","14":"tag-failure","15":"tag-have","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-heart","18":"tag-in","19":"tag-just","20":"tag-kill","21":"tag-longbrewing","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-pandemic","26":"tag-people","27":"tag-reversal","28":"tag-to","29":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}