Millions of Americans likely to develop and die from heart disease live in cardiology deserts — areas of the country without a single heart specialist to care for them. New research published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that nearly half of all counties in the U.S.
lack a practicing cardiologist. Most of those counties are rural, with residents who tend to be sicker in general with complex medical problems. “The counties that do not have cardiologists probably need this type of specialty care even more,” said the study’s senior author, Dr.
Haider Warraich, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. People living in those counties “have a much higher prevalence of the entire spectrum of cardiovascular risk factors, including obesity, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol,” he said. Warraich’s study, conducted in partnership with the web-based pharmacy GoodRx, found that of the 3,143 counties in the U.
S., 46.3% don't have a cardiologist.
Most of those, 86.2%, are rural counties with lower income levels, less access to healthy food and fewer health care providers overall . And though heart disease is the nation’s No.
1 killer , people living in rural areas are dying earlier and more often from heart disease that could've been prevented, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published in May. “We’ve got small towns with high health needs and the inability to .
