Russian mortality trends in the early XXI century: official statistics data

From the second half of the XX century, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the main problems of the modern medicine. Over the last two decades, developed countries demonstrated a marked decrease in all-cause mortality and CVD mortality, in particular. In Russia, since the mid-1960s, all-cause mortality gradually increased, with the proportion of CVD deaths being over 50 %, which led to unparalleled high levels of national mortality. In 2009, the absolute number of CVD deaths was 1136661, or I case out of 1,8. In other words, 3114 Russian people die from CVD every day. From 2004, all-cause mortality, including CVD mortality, started to decline, and this tendency has continued until at least 2009, as demonstrated by the mortality rate of 801 per 100,000. However, the mortality levels are still higher than in the late 1980s. The authors analysed the CVD dynamics between 2003 (the highest levels) and 2009 inclusive, using the official national statistics data. The last few years demonstrated a positive tendency of declining mortality. In particular, the all-cause mortality (deaths per 100,000) decreased from 1644,2 in 2003 to 1416,8 in 2009 (by 13,8 %). CVD mortality decreased by 13,6 %, and more markedly mostly in working-age people (by 18,9 %). Therefore, in 2009, the number of lives saved due to the decreasing CVD mortality was 260741. Further studies will explain the recent mortality trends in Russia.