Epidemiological relationships between respiratory and cardiovascular diseases

Cardiovascular and respiratory diseases are common and becoming increasingly more so due to improved availability worldwide of diagnostics and an ageing population. While the true coexistence of both sets of diseases is probably underestimated, multimorbidity is increasingly recognized as a problem with over 70% of people over the age of 65 years having at least two conditions and a correlation between increasing age and one of the diseases being cardiovascular. Multimorbidity increases healthcare costs due to a combination of multiple medications, and longer and more frequent hospital stays, and is also associated with increased mortality. Identifying multiple diagnoses in an individual is important as management of individual diseases can impact both morbidity and mortality.