ABSTRACT
It is a well known fact that in Hungary--as in the European Countries, in general--the trends of premature mortality are mainly determined by the trends of mortality caused by cardiovascular diseases. The timeliness of our present study on changes in trends of early cardiovascular mortality in the period of 1970-1997 in Hungary in comparison with trends of EU countries is underlined by the upcoming access of Hungary to the European Union. The evaluation is based on WHO data, the relative risk of premature mortality due to different forms of cardiovascular diseases for different sex and age groups of the Hungarian population is expressed as a ratio between standardized mortality rates of Hungarian groups and that of EU-average and of countries specified. Detailed data demonstrate that the risk of early death caused by cardiovascular--especially ischaemic heart and cerebrovascular--diseases, in contrast with EU countries, is significantly increased in Hungary, most significantly in age groups of 35-44 and 45-64 years for both sexes. The authors' results draw the attention to the possible shortcomings of health care systems and the lack of comprehensive health promotion (including prevention) programs in Hungary.
