Heart disease and cancer, which cause half of American deaths each year, continued to loosen their deadly grip in 2013, while rates of deaths attributed to flu and pneumonia surged, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said this week.
Posting its year-end “data brief” on mortality in the United States in 2013, the CDC reported no change in expected life spans for Americans: On average, an American woman can expect to live to 81.2 years of age — 85.5 if she makes it to the age of 65. A man can expect, on average, to live to 76.4 years of age. A man still alive at age 65 is likely to live, on average, to almost 83.
Of the 2.6 million deaths reported in the United States in 2013, 611,105 — almost 24 percent — were because of heart disease. Some 584,881 — nearly 23 percent — were attributed to cancer.
Stroke, the nation’s fourth-leading cause of death in 2012, dropped to No. 5 as a killer of Americans in 2013, despite the fact that Americans are suffering strokes at increasingly younger ages. In 2013, 128,978 Americans died of stroke, and the likelihood of an American dying of stroke at any age fell by 1.9 percent from its 2012 level-roughly the same drop as was seen with cancer.
Unintentional injuries — including motor vehicle crashes, falls and other accidents — became the nation’s fourth-leading cause of death in 2013, claiming nearly as many lives (130,557) as chronic lower respiratory diseases such as emphysema and asthma (149,205).
