A study presented Sunday at the American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans revealed that heart failure hospitalization rate has risen dramatically among seniors in the United States in the past 3 decades.

Heart failure is a chronic disease, which occurs when any part of the heart muscle weakens and the heart can’t supply the body’s cells with enough oxygen and nutrient-rich blood. The condition makes daily activities harder to deal with due to fatigue and shortness of breath. Nearly 5.3 million Americans live with heart failure and 660,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, according to estimates of the American Heart Association.

The study, led by Longjian Liu, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics of the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia, Pa., involved data on more than 2.2 million patients (age 65 or older) enrolled in the National Hospital Discharge Surveys between 1980 and 2006. It found the number of patients 65 and older who were hospitalized for heart failure increased 131 percent to 807,082 in 2006, from 348,866 in 1980.

For women, rates rose from 13.95 hospitalizations per 1,000 members of the population to 19.58 in 2006. For men, rates rose from 16.57 hospitalizations per 1,000 members of the population in 1980 to 22.87 in 2006. Moreover, patients ages 75-84 had twice the risk of being hospitalized for heart failure than those 65-74, while those age 85 or older had four times more risk of hospitalization for heart failure than those ages 65-74.

The increase needs to be stopped urgently, but this is not possible “unless innovative strategies are implemented. The prevention and treatment of heart failure has become an urgent public health need with national implications. The key is to prevent risk factors for the disease,” Liu said.

Risk factors include high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, obesity, and lifestyle factors such as smoking, lack of physical exercise and a diet rich in fatty foods. Also, efforts should be made to prevent chronic kidney disease and pneumonia as they contribute to heart failure as well.

The situation appears to be out of control. Keeping in mind that the number of US adults age 65 and older is going to double to a projected 70 million and more than one in five will be 65 or older by 2030, the number of heart failures will see a major increase, which translates into higher costs for Medicare, the government’s health insurance program for the elderly.

“That's our dilemma. With the present set of resources, this elderly population that we're taking care of that we didn't take care of before, plus the baby boomers, is a double demographic. We will not have the resources to care for them,” said Vincent Bufalino, clinical associate professor of medicine at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago.

According to the American Heart Association, heart failure is expected to cost $34.8 billion in the US this year. Making a quick account, it’s not hard to guess where that is going to lead in the years to come: economy failure.