A look at the numbers for coronary artery disease is enough to give anyone chest pain 1  : More than 15,800,000 Americans have known coronary artery disease. 2  About 8 million of them have had heart attacks. 3  Around 500,000 people will die of coronary artery disease this year.4  More than a million will have a heart attack.n this article. Atherosclerosis -- sometimes called hardening of the arteries -- can slowly narrow and harden the arteries throughout the body. When atherosclerosis affects the arteries of the heart, it’s called coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease is the No. 1 killer of Americans.