Test tubes - British Heart Foundation

Our heart disease facts

Cardiovascular disease is an umbrella term for all diseases of the heart and circulation, including heart disease, stroke, heart failure and congenital heart disease.

Collectively, heart and circulatory diseases cause more than one in three of all deaths in the UK, accounting for more than 191,000 deaths each year at an estimated cost of £30 billion to the economy.

Coronary heart disease (CHD)

Almost one in five men and one in eight women die from heart disease.

CHD is responsible for more than 88,000 deaths in the UK each year, an average of 224 people each day.

More than 26,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK died from CHD in 2009

There are nearly 2.7 million people living with heart disease in the UK.

There are more than 1.6 million men and more than a million women with CHD in the UK.

Death rates from heart disease are highest in Scotland and northern England and lowest in southern England.

The UK spends £3.2 billion each year on healthcare costs for heart disease.

Heart attack (myocardial infarction)

Most deaths from heart disease are caused by a heart attack.

There are around 124,000 heart attacks in the UK each year.

Around 62,000 men and 39,000 women in England suffer a heart attack each year.

In England, around 11 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women who were admitted to hospital with a heart attack die within 30 days.

The chances of dying from a heart attack increases with age and is higher in women than men.

We estimate there are around a million men and nearly 500,000 women living in the UK who have had a heart attack. More than 900,000 of these are under the age of 75.

In Scotland, the  number of heart attacks each year has decreased by around 25 per cent between 2000 and 2009 in both men and women, but is between 20 per cent and 35 per cent higher than England's incidence level.

Every six minutes someone dies of a heart attack in the UK.

One in three people who have a heart attack die before reaching hospital.

Heart failure

Around 750,000 people are living with heart failure in the UK.

We estimate there are more than 27,000 new cases of heart failure in the UK each year.

Incidence of heart failure is 60 per cent higher in men compared with women.

Incidence of heart failure is highest in Northern Ireland.

Stroke

Stroke causes more than 43,000 deaths in the UK each year.

In England and Scotland, stroke incidence rates are about 25 per cent higher in men than women.

Around 57,000 men and 68,000 women in England suffer a stroke every year.

There are approximately 152,000 strokes in the UK each year.

We estimate nearly 1.2 million people living in the UK have had a stroke - roughly evenly split between men and women. Around 600,000 of these people are less than 75 years of age.

Risk factors of cardiovascular disease

In Great Britain, 21 per cent of adults smoke cigarettes.

Smoking increases the risk of heart disease and a study of British doctors found smokers had around a 60 per cent greater chance of dying from heart disease than non smokers.

The prevalence of smoking is higher in Scotland and Northern Ireland compared to England and Wales.

Around a quarter of adults in England are obese.

Around 30 per cent of boys and girls aged 2 to 15 in England and Scotland are overweight or obese.

Only a third of men and women currently eat the recommended five portions of fruit and veg per day in Britain.

Only around one in five boys and girls aged 5 to 15 consume the recommended amount of fruit and veg.

More than a third of men and nearly a third of women regularly exceed the government recommended level of alcohol intake.

Around one in three adults in England and Scotland have high blood pressure and nearly half of them are not receiving treatment for the condition.

Around six in ten adults in England have blood cholesterol levels of 5mmol/l or above.

If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for here, email us or call 020 7554 0164 and we’ll do our best to help.

You can also download our full set of heart statistics.