Heart Screening - Heart Disease in Men

In the UK in 2014 78,240 men died from cardiovascular disease, compared with around 19,600 deaths from lung cancer, the most common cancer in men. Men often worry about prostate cancer, but this was responsible for 11,300 deaths in the same year, a figure outweighed nearly sevenfold by those dying from cardiovascular disease.

 

 

Compared with women, men are far more likely to present with a heart attack as the first manifestation of coronary artery disease. Given the high mortality that this carries it is important that high risk individuals are identified early on so that with lifestyle changes and, if necessary, drug therapy their risk can be significantly reduced. There are a number of effective screening tools to identify high risk individuals but it is well recognised that men are far less likely than women to visit a doctor and so without concerted screening efforts many men will forgo the opportunity to reduce their cardiovascular risk.