Around 22 million people live in counties that are "cardiology deserts" and need to travel nearly 90 miles round trip to seek specialty heart care.

Millions of Americans likely to develop and die from heart disease live in cardiology deserts — areas of the country without a single heart specialist to care for them.

New research published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds that nearly half of all counties in the U.S. lack a practicing cardiologist.

Most of those counties are rural, with residents who tend to be sicker in general with complex medical problems.

“The counties that do not have cardiologists probably need this type of specialty care even more,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Haider Warraich, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

  • @IsThisAnAI
    6•5 months ago

    I for one am shocked we didn’t have a lot of highly trained doctors sitting on their thumbs being underpaid and not practicing for the 6 random people living in Northern Montana. SHOCKED!

  • @morphballganon
    5•5 months ago

    probably need this type of specialty care even more

    A given rural county will have fewer patients that need a cardiologist than an urban county of the same size, since population density is much of what determines whether a county is urban or rural…

  • @psmgx
    2•5 months ago

    A lot of the US doesn’t need a cardiologist to tell them their too fucking fat and need to lose weight.