[Epidemiology of ischemic cardiopathy in Tuscany]

In Italy, parallel to the reduction of mortality due to myocardial infarction over the last 20 years there has been an increase in the overall number of ischemic cardiac patients. The reason for this is that the decline in incidence has been outweighed by an increase both in the number of "survivors" of acute events and in the mean age of the population. In Tuscany in 1997 the principal cause of death, for both sexes, was cardiovascular disease (39.2% of total deaths in males, 23.7% in females). Considering the specific pathologies, in males the principal cause of death was ischemic heart disease (13.5%), while in females it was cerebrovascular disease (17.4%). For the different age-groups, both in males and females cardiovascular disease was the principal cause of death only in the > 74 year age-group, which accounts for by far the greatest number of deaths and thus conditions the statistics, making cardiovascular disease the major cause of death in general. In the period 1987-1998 a progressive reduction in the mortality due to cardiovascular disease and myocardial infarction was observed in both sexes: a comparison of Tuscany with Italy as a whole in 1994 showed lower mortality rates in Tuscany across all the subgroups. Finally, the annual rates of incidence and mortality concerning myocardial infarction in 1998 are analyzed by age-group and, standardized for 100,000 inhabitants, for each of the local healthcare zones in Tuscany.