Heart Failure Deaths Hit 452,573 in 2023, Up 37% Since 2010, New HFSA Report Finds

Heart failure killed 452,573 Americans in 2023, accounting for 14.6% of all deaths in the country that year, according to the HF Stats 2026 report released October 5, 2026 by the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) and published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure. Age-adjusted mortality from the disease rose approximately 37% between 2010 and 2023, and the HFSA says early 2024 data show the trend still climbing.

Heart failure mortality had been falling for years before 2010. The report's authors, chaired by Dr. Eiran Gorodeski of University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute in Cleveland, say the reversal wiped out more than a decade of prior progress.

The Scope of the Problem

About 7.7 million U.S. adults, roughly 3% of the adult population, currently live with heart failure, according to the HFSA report. That number is projected to hit 8.7 million by 2030, 10.3 million by 2040, and 11.4 million by 2050 as the population ages and rates of obesity and hypertension keep climbing.

The report estimates nearly one in four Americans will develop heart failure at some point in their lives. Roughly a third of U.S. adults without symptoms already meet the clinical criteria for being at-risk, a stage doctors call Stage A.

Between 2010 and 2022, hospitalization rates for heart failure rose among adults under 65 while falling among those 65 and older, the HFSA reports. Crude mortality from the disease jumped 121% among adults ages 25 to 44 and 96% among those 45 to 64 between 2001 and 2020, far outpacing any increase among older Americans.

Cheap Drugs, Low Use

Four classes of drugs form the backbone of modern heart failure treatment: beta-blockers, renin-angiotensin system inhibitors, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, and SGLT2 inhibitors. They're well-studied, relatively cheap, and proven to extend life.

Only 18% of the more than 3 million Americans with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction actually receive all four, according to real-world data cited in the HFSA report. That's a system failing to deliver medicine that already exists and already works.

Dr. Thiru Chinnadurai and Dr. Tariq Ahmad of Yale School of Medicine, writing in an accompanying editorial, called for electronic health record prompts, multidisciplinary programs, and simpler medication regimens to close the gap. "The therapeutic evidence is clear," they wrote. "The next challenge is ensuring that patients consistently receive and remain on the therapies proven to improve outcomes."

Why Deaths Are Rising While Treatment Improves

Heart disease overall remains the leading cause of death in the United States. According to an HCPLive interview published September 30, 2026 with cardiologists Dr. Jesus Almendral and Dr. Kanika Mody, age-adjusted mortality from acute heart attacks fell 89% and from chronic ischemic heart disease fell 71% between 1970 and 2022. But mortality from nonischemic conditions, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, and arrhythmias, rose 81% over the same stretch.

People who used to die of heart attacks now survive them, live longer, and go on to develop heart failure later. Obesity prevalence climbed from 15% to 40% of U.S. adults over that same 1970-to-2022 window, according to the HCPLive report, feeding the downstream conditions that now dominate cardiovascular deaths. Better emergency cardiology bought time, and lifestyle-driven risk factors are now cashing that time in.

The disease doesn't hit all Americans equally. A September 28, 2026 American Heart Association scientific statement reported in Drug Topics found cardiovascular disease has overtaken cancer as the leading cause of death among Hispanic adults, driven by obesity rates near 46%, type 2 diabetes affecting 15.5% of Hispanic adults (nearly double the rate among non-Hispanic whites), and earlier onset of both conditions. Dr. Johanna Contreras of Mount Sinai, who chaired the statement's writing group, pointed to uninsurance, poverty, and language barriers as additional drivers beyond biology.

Research Moving, Slowly

At the European Society of Cardiology Congress, covered by the American College of Cardiology on October 1, 2026, researchers presented trial data on new heart failure therapies, including the oral drug AZD5462 showing early promise and in-hospital dapagliflozin producing measurable improvements in congestion within a week for hospitalized patients. Separately, UT Southwestern researchers published findings in Science Advances identifying a blood protein, C1QTNF1, that may causally link social and economic disadvantage to heart failure risk, a potential future screening tool.

The HFSA report lands on a simple point: the tools to slow heart failure mostly already exist, and most eligible patients aren't getting them. Whether hospitals, insurers, and primary care practices move to close that 18% gap, or whether the mortality curve keeps climbing through the rest of this decade, is the open question the report leaves for policymakers and the medical system to answer.