Per capita income and regional differences in ischemic heart disease (IHD) mortality trends between 1998 and 2007

Background: Recent studies revealed a significant decrease in mortality from IHD within Germany between 1998 and 2007. There are concerns that, particularly in younger subjects, low socioeconomic status (SES) may impede benefiting from improvements in cardiovascular treatment and prevention. We thus investigated whether IHD trends in German counties were influenced by their per capita income. Material and Methods: Data on deaths from IHD (ICD 10 I20-I25) between 1998 and 2007 and per capita income (1998) were obtained from the State Offices for Statistics. We categorised 429 German counties into quartiles of per…