[Cardiovascular mortality in industrial and developing countries (author's transl)].

In developing countries when causes of death are registered cardiovascular mortality levels revealed themselves surprising. For instance, they appear to be more important in Tebessa (Algeria) during 1974-1975, Mauritius (1973-1976) or Egypt (1971-1973) than in france, United States or Sweden before the age of 45 and very near after this age. These results are consistent with the mortality patterns by causes of death proposed by Preston according to life expectancy at birth. Before the age of 45, rheumatic heart diseases can explain this overmortality. After this age the recent observations in the Third-World, especially in Africa, show that cardiomyopathy, cardiomegaly and principally hypertension are widely spread to-day. On the other hand, ischemic heart diseases are still rare. For many authors, cardiovascular diseases are increasing in Africa because ways of life in developing and developed countries are becoming identical. In fact, this trend could be a little artificial. Formerly indeed, disparity in population age structures and mortality differences for all other causes were not enough taken into account.