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By Melissa Fleur Afshar
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Deaths linked to heart valve disease are rising among older Americans after nearly two decades of progress, with the primary concern being that longer lifespans and increasingly complex health problems could be contributing to the reversal.
“Despite remarkable advances in minimally invasive valve therapies, mortality from valvular heart disease has plateaued,” Dr. Jawad Haider, the co-director of the structural heart program at Hartford HealthCare Heart & Vascular Institute at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, told Newsweek. “Many patients are living longer but are also developing more chronic medical conditions, making treatment more complex and limiting the benefits of intervention.”
New preliminary research found that heart valve disease death rates among U.S. adults aged 65 and older, which had declined for almost two decades, began rising in 2018 and remained elevated through 2023.
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Researchers project that the rate will stay elevated until 2040 rather than resume its earlier decline.
The findings will be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2026, held from November 6 to 9 in Chicago, Illinois.
What the Study Found
Heart valve disease is a broad term for conditions in which one or more of the heart’s four valves, the aortic, mitral, pulmonary or tricuspid valve, do not work properly. More than 80 million people worldwide live with heart valve disease, according to the American Heart Association’s 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics.
In the U.S., the condition contributes to more than 57,000 deaths annually.
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Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research, covering stats from 1999 to 2023. The study included 1,204,490 heart valve disease-related deaths among Americans aged 65 and older. Of those deaths, 42.9 percent were among men and 57.1 percent among women.
The death rate fell from 123.2 per 100,000 people in 1999 to its lowest levels immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, before climbing to 109.2 per 100,000 in 2023. Statistical forecasts indicated it could remain at roughly that level through 2040.
Researchers had pooled the data, evaluated death rate trends and age-related patterns before employing statistical software to make those estimations for the future.
The findings showed that men had a higher death rate than women, at 124.7 compared with 103.1 per 100,000. Non-Hispanic white adults had the highest rate among the racial and ethnic groups studied, at 122.4 per 100,000. Death rates were also higher in non-metropolitan areas than metropolitan areas.
Age was a major factor too. In 1999, adults aged 85 and older had more than 15 times the death rate of adults aged 65 to 69.
Why Death Rates May Be Rising
Haider said deaths among people with valve disease may reflect several overlapping medical conditions rather than the valve problem alone.
“In many cases, patients are not dying solely as a direct consequence of their valve disease, but from the cumulative impact of heart failure, frailty, kidney disease, lung disease, and other co-morbidities that often accompany advanced valvular disease,” he said.
Access also remains a concern, Haider said, particularly in rural communities where patients may travel hours to see a heart valve specialist, potentially delaying diagnosis and treatment.
The study's lead author Hritvik Jain, M.D., a resident physician in internal medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pennsylvania, said in a statement that the “decades-long decline in deaths from heart valve disease has stopped,” calling for earlier detection, timely treatment and equitable access to specialist care.
The American Heart Association launched Target: Aortic Stenosis in 2020 to support the need for earlier diagnosis, timely treatment and evidence-based care, followed by its Heart Valve Initiative in 2025.
Jain and his team cautioned that the death certificates assessed may have contained coding inaccuracies and do not provide detailed information on disease severity, echocardiographic findings or individual treatment history. The study also cannot establish cause and effect, and the COVID-19 pandemic may have strongly influenced trends toward the end of the study period when progress began to stall.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Paul Donnelley.
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