Coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of death in Germany. There is a distinction between acute myocardial infarction, which is a directly life-threatening acute event, and the chronic form of the disease. Until now, there has been a lack of up-to-date analyses examining long-term mortality trends with a differentiated view of acute myocardial infarction and chronic CHD. Such an analysis has now been published in the current Journal of Health Monitoring under the auspices of the Robert Koch Institute.