Acute myocardial infarction in Newark, N.J. A study of racial incidence

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Abstract
The incidence of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) among urban blacks appears to be considerably less than that among wites. To evaluate this, all AMI among Newark, New Jersey, USA residents in 1973 were evaluated, using the 1970 census for calculating age, race and sex-specific rates. Death certificates of patients dead on arrival (DOA) from coronary heart disease (total 517) were also evaluated; 273 AMI were documented. Although crude rates per 100,000 population were higher for whites than for blacks, age-specific rates by decades from 20-80 revealed no differences. Coronary DOA rates were consistently higher among blacks than among whites, reaching approximately a 2:1 ratio in the older decades. The apparent rarity of AMI among Newark blacks is attributable to their relative youth compared to whites (77% under 40 vs. 56%) and a higher out-of-hospital coronary death rate.