FROM HEART
For the first time since the middle of the 20th century, cardiovascular disease is not the main cause of death overall in the United Kingdom, according to 2012 data published in Heart.
Cancer narrowly took the lead, with 29% of mortalities in 2012 having resulted from this disease, compared to the 28% of deaths that resulted from cardiovascular disease (CVD). But CVD remains the largest killer of women in the U.K.
In 2012, 28% of all female deaths and 32% of all male deaths were caused by CVD. The highest cause of mortality for men was cancer, with 32% of male deaths having resulted from that disease. A slightly smaller percentage of female deaths – 27% – was caused by cancer than by CVD. The Office for National Statistics (ONS), the National Records of Scotland, and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency provided the data.
Of the CVD deaths, 46%, or just under 73,500, were from coronary heart disease (CHD) and 26%, or about 41,000, were from stroke.
CVD caused more than a quarter of premature deaths – defined as deaths occurring in people younger than 75 – in men and 18% of premature deaths in women. CHD was the most common cause of premature death in U.K. men.
CVD death rates also varied per region of the United Kingdom, with higher percentages of the populations of Scotland and the north of England having died of CVD than the percentage of people living in the south of England who died from the disease, according to age-standardized death rates by local authorities. Glasgow City, Scotland, had the highest CVD mortality, with 144/100,0000 people having died prematurely and 400/100,000 people having died of the disease.
“The improvements in survival [of people with CVD] mean that there is now a high prevalence of people living with CVD,” according to Prachi Bhatnagar, Ph.D., and her colleagues.
The numbers of people suffering from CHD, stroke, atrial fibrillation and heart failure in the U.K. in 2012 and 2013 were approximately 2.3 million, 1.2 million, 1 million and 480,000, respectively, Quality of Outcomes Framework data suggest. The number of operations carried out to treat CHD is increasing in the United Kingdom, with greater than 90,000 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) having been carried out in 2012 – more than twice as many as had been performed a decade earlier.
“CVD remains a substantial burden to the U.K., both in terms of health and economic costs,” according to the researchers.
Read the full study in Heart ( doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2015-307516 ).
klennon@frontlinemedcom.com
