Myocardial infarction and coronary deaths in the World Health Organization MONICA Project. Registration procedures, event rates, and case-fatality rates in 38 populations from 21 countries in four continents.

The WHO MONICA Project, although designed to study longitudinal trends within populations, provides the opportunity for relating rates of validated CHD deaths to nonfatal myocardial infarction across populations. There are major differences between populations in nonfatal as well as fatal coronary event rates. They refute suggestions that high CHD mortality rates are associated with high case-fatality rates or a relative excess of sudden deaths. The high proportion of CHD deaths for which no diagnostic information is available is a cause for concern.