Future trends in the treatment of dyslipidemia. Introduction.

The latest figures on coronary heart disease (CHD) and CHD death released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute show that heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States.1 The data for 1999-the most recent year from which data are available-show that almost 750,000 Americans died of CHD and almost 500,000 of these were sudden deaths. In turn, of these sudden deaths, almost half died before they reached medical attention at a hospital, and of those who did reach a hospital, 16.5% either were dead on arrival or died in the emergency room.