Summary

Cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic kidney disease-Australian facts: prevalence and incidence is the second in a series of national reports by the National Centre for Monitoring Vascular Diseases at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. It describes the prevalence and incidence in the Australian population of 3 chronic diseases, acting alone or together: cardiovascular disease (CVD) (including conditions such as heart disease and stroke), diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD).

How many people have CVD, diabetes or CKD?

In 2011-12:

  • 22% of Australians (3.7 million) aged 18 and over reported that they had 1 or more cardiovascular diseases, including hypertensive disease, heart disease, stroke or heart failure
  • an estimated 5% of Australians (917,000) aged 18 and over had diabetes (based on self-reported and measured data). Of these, 1 in 5, or 1% of the adult population, showed biomedical signs of diabetes but did not self-report that they had the condition
  • around 10% of Australians (1.7 million) aged 18 and over had measured biomedical signs of CKD. Of these, 97% showed early signs of CKD (stages 1-3).

How many new cases of CVD, diabetes and CKD are there each year?

In 2011:

  • an estimated 69,900 people aged 25 and over had an acute coronary event, with almost two-thirds (63%) of the events occurring in men
  • of the over 53,500 people who began using insulin to treat their diabetes, 68% had type 2 diabetes, 12% had gestational diabetes, 4% had type 1 diabetes and 1% had other forms of diabetes requiring insulin (diabetes type was unknown for another 15%).

In 2010:

  • there were over 4,800 new cases of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in Australia, including people who do not receive kidney replacement therapy (KRT). For each case of ESKD receiving KRT, there was about 1 new case of ESKD that did not.

What are the associations between CVD, diabetes and CKD?

In 2011-12:

  • over 1 in 4 (29%) Australian adults had CVD, diabetes or CKD (based on self-reported and measured data); 7% (1.2 million) had at least 2 of these conditions and 1% (182,000) had all 3 conditions
  • over two-thirds of people with diabetes (68%) had CVD and/or CKD, compared with 51% of people with CKD who had CVD and/or diabetes, and 30% of people with CVD who had diabetes and/or CKD
  • the presence of comorbidity increased with age; predominantly, where one of the conditions was CVD. For example, for those aged 65 and over who had CVD and CKD, the rate was 7 times that for those aged 45 - 64 (15% compared with 2%).