Cardiac Deaths (Hansard, 24 May 2004)

§ Ruth Kelly

I have been asked to reply.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.

Letter from Colin Mowl to Mrs. Iris Robinson, dated 24 May 2004:

The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your recent question asking how many sudden cardiac deaths there were in each of the last five years broken down by age range. I am replying in his absence. (175164)

It is not possible to give an exact number of cardiac deaths which occurred suddenly, as information on whether or not a death was sudden is not currently recorded at death registration. We have therefore provided figures for all heart diseases, sudden cardiac death (so described), acute ischaemic heart disease and cardiac arrhythmias.

The latest year for which data are available is 2002. Figures are shown in the attached table for each year from 1998 to 2002.

Number of deaths from (a) all heart diseases, (b) sudden cardiac death, so described, (c) acute ischaemic heart disease and (d) cardiac arrhythmics¹, by age England and Wales, 1998 to 2002²
Cause of death	Age
0–14	15–44	45–64	65–84	85+
(a) All heart diseases
1998	101	1,775	17,332	86,487	41,719
1999	104	1,748	16,470	82,090	41,169
2000	89	1,702	15,756	76,195	39,822
2001³	96	1,680	14,952	73,047	40,906
2002³	81	1,712	14,355	70,775	41,194
(b) Sudden cardiac death, so described
1998	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—
1999	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—
2000	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—	⁴—
2001³	0	6	4	1	1
2002³	0	4	1	5	0
(c) Acute ischaemic heart disease
1998	4	621	8,017	38,395	13,597
1999	3	579	7,435	34,899	12,917
2000	1	555	6,694	31,470	12,292
2001³	4	552	6,184	28,879	11,306
2002³	1	553	5,928	27,875	11,453
(d) Cardiac arrhythmias
1998	13	46	99	1,526	1,405
1999	6	49	110	1,528	1,546
2000	5	50	133	1,409	1,554
2001³	10	50	84	1,348	1,625
2002³	5	40	75	1,365	1,764
¹ The cause of death was defined using the ICD-9 for the years 1998 to 2000, and ICD-10 for 2001 and 2002. The codes used are listed below: All heart diseases ICD-10 120–151, ICD-9 410–429 Sudden cardiac death, so described ICD-10 146.1, ICD-9 no equivalent code Acute ischaemic heart disease ICD-10 121, 124, ICD-9 410–411 Cardiac arrhythmias ICD-10 144–149, ICD-9 426–427.
² Figures are based on deaths occurring in each calendar year.
³ The introduction of ICD-10 for coding cause of death in 2001 means that data for heart diseases are not completely comparable between ICD-9 and ICD-10. In particular there is no equivalent code for I46.1—Sudden cardiac death (so described). Any sudden changes in the above figures in 2001 should therefore be interpreted with caution. An article describing the changes to circulatory diseases in more detail is due to be published in Health Statistics Quarterly on May 27. (Griffiths C, Brock A and Rooney C (2004) The effect of the introduction of ICD-10 on mortality from circulatory diseases in England and Wales. Health Statistics Quarterly 22, in press.
⁴ Figures only available from 2001, after the introduction of the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) for coding cause of death.