Heart disease patients living in poorer areas of British Columbia are up to twice as likely as patients living in better-off areas to die from chronic diseases.

University of British Columbia researchers said even in a country with universal healthcare services such as Canada a neighborhood's socioeconomic status can have a dramatic impact on life expectancy for patients with heart disease.

Study co-author Claire Heslop, a medical/doctoral student said researchers studied 485 patients with heart disease over 13 years. Death rates from different types of diseases were compared to the patients' neighborhood data based on education, median family income and unemployment.

The study, published online in the journal Public Library of Science ONE, found that patient death rates from chronic diseases other than heart disease were more than twice as high in the lowest socioeconomic area than in the highest. Surprisingly, no difference was found in deaths from heart disease across neighborhoods, Heslop said.