Mortality From Heart Disease at High Altitude

Abstract

Because of suggestions by practicing physicians in Peru and Colorado that fatal cases of coronary thrombosis and of hypertension were rare at higher elevations, Colorado mortality statistics for these causes for 1949-1951 and 1959-1961 were analyzed for variation by altitude. Altitude-associated variations in crude cause-specific mortality rates were eradicated by age-standardization of the rates, indicating that the apparent scarcity of fatal cases of arteriosclerotic heart disease and hypertension at high altitudes in Colorado is due to smaller proportions of older persons in the population. There is no increased mortality risk from these causes at higher elevations in Colorado despite the existence of altitude-induced erythremia.