It is estimated that CVD accounts for 31% of all deaths worldwide. In Spain in 2014, 63,812 women and 53,581 men died of CVD. And it is foreseeable that these figures will increase in the coming years due to the aging of the population. At the macroeconomic level, CVD represents a heavy burden for the economies of countries, both in terms of direct and indirect health care costs, as well as labor costs. In Spain, it has been calculated that CVD generate an annual health expense of more than 4,000 million euros, to which should be added another 2997 million euros attributable to labor expense . For all these reasons, CVD constitute a double challenge health and social problem whose overcoming requires global actions that involve not only health institutions, but all citizens. The four pillars of these actions are Education, early diagnosis, optimal treatment, and research.

Most CVD can be prevented by educating the population to avoid certain lifestyle habits that are harmful to the heart and arteries, such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, or harmful alcohol consumption. Special emphasis should be placed on Education on cardiovascular health in children, first, because the heart and arteries begin to suffer the harmful impact of harmful lifestyle habits from the first decade of life and, second, because the probability of modifying health-related behaviors is greater the younger a subject is. Indeed, CVD prevention begins in the family and at school, not in health centers or at research.

In individuals predisposed to CVD because they present one or more of the cardiovascular risk factors (arterial hypertension, diabetes, obesity, or hypercholesterolemia), early detection through routine health examinations is essential. It is important to note that cardiovascular risk factors do not produce symptoms per se, so their detection is only possible if they are specifically "looked for". For this reason, cardiovascular health checkups are paramount, especially in people with immediate family members. Cardiovascular risk factors cannot be cured, but they can be controlled with treatment, which will minimize their harmful effect on the heart and arteries.

In patients already affected by CVD, the optimal employment of the therapeutic protocols recommended in the relevant guidelines drawn up by national and international medical scientific societies is mandatory. Thanks to the generalization of these protocols, the medical attendance of patients has been rationalized, individualizing their treatment and achieving a significant reduction in both mortality and morbidity from CVD.

Just as population aging and the generalization of lifestyles that are harmful to the heart explain the increase in CVD, the lack of knowledge of most of the mechanisms involved in its development explains its poor prognosis. Therefore, it is essential to carry out research by sharing experiences, resources, and efforts. To this end, the network de research Cardiovascular (RIC) of the high school de Salud Carlos III has existed in Spain for years, with more than 800 researchers from all regions of Spain organized into 64 groups research. The final goal of the RIC is to reduce the unfavorable impact of CVD on the survival and quality of life of Spanish citizens, promoting the transfer of the results of the research to the daily clinical internship in the form of new diagnostic and therapeutic means with real added value compared to those currently available.

Although the statistical data indicate that the present of CVD is "worrisome" and its future may be "threatening", there is room for hope. If the advances of biomedical research and the improvement of health attendance have reduced the unfavorable health impact of CVD compared to that of decades ago, it is to be expected that they will reduce it even further in the coming years. On the other hand, the growing Education of society in following healthier lifestyle habits, and the awareness that greater longevity should be accompanied by greater health, augurs that CVD will not have the breeding ground that it has had until now and that its growth will therefore be slowed.