ABSTRACT
This chapter describes broad aspects of the coronary heart disease pandemic. It describes the methods used to analyze coronary heart disease mortality rates during the pandemic. The chapter examines changes in individual lifestyle risk factors in the United States during the emergence and decline of the pandemic. Improved knowledge of coronary heart disease has led to changes in its terminology and classification. The standard disease classification system was adopted in the 1890s and called the International List of Causes of Death. Coronary heart disease is characterized by a partial or total blockage of the flow of blood in one or more of the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle or myocardium. Pandemics of chronic diseases in the twentieth century have usually been difficult to measure and analyze. They must be differentiated from normal disease patterns as well as from diseases that have increased in prevalence with the increase in the proportion of older persons in the population.
