Many deaths associated with heart disease are preventable.
The key to prevention of coronary heart disease is related to many aspects of lifestyle. By modifying lifestyle factors, individuals themselves, hold the key to lowering their risk for developing and preventing illness and death from heart disease. Cigarette smoking is considered the biggest risk factor for sudden cardiac death. Smokers' risk of heart attack is more than twice that of a nonsmoker. Smokers' who do suffer a heart attack are more likely to die than nonsmokers who have a heart attack are.