England is in “the worst heart care crisis in living memory”, a charity has warned, with the numbers of people dying before the age of 75 from heart and circulatory diseases now at their highest level in over a decade.
An analysis by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has shown that in 2022 more than 39,000 people in England died prematurely of cardiovascular conditions including heart attacks, coronary heart disease and stroke. This is an average of 750 people each week, and is the highest annual total since 2008, the BHF warned.
The backwards trend has been broadly mirrored in age-standardised premature death rates, which account for changes and differences in population sizes and demographics. Before 2012, the number and rate of deaths from these conditions under the age of 75 were falling, in part thanks to decades of medical and scientific breakthroughs, the charity highlighted.
But after nearly a decade of slowing progress, recent statistics show that the rate of premature deaths from cardiovascular disease has now increased in England for three years back to back, the first time there has been such a clear reversal in the trend for almost 60 years, it said.
More analysis is needed to understand what is driving the trend, the charity argued. However, it pointed to several likely factors.
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These include an increasingly unhealthy population and widening health inequalities in England over the last decade, as well as longstanding and extreme pressure on the NHS and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic and potential effects of Covid-19 infection.
There has also been “a lack of meaningful action” from government over the last 10 years to address many of the causes of heart disease and stroke, such as stubbornly high obesity rates, the BHF argued.
To get back on track to reducing deaths from cardiovascular disease, the charity has therefore called for urgent action on three fronts: better prevention of heart disease and stroke, prioritisation of NHS heart care, and “supercharging” of cardiovascular research to unlock groundbreaking new treatments and cures.
BHF chief executive Dr Charmaine Griffiths said: “These figures paint a heartbreaking picture. For more than half a century, pioneering research and medical advances helped us make huge strides towards reducing heart attack and stroke deaths. But this has been followed by a lost decade of progress in which far too many people have lost loved ones to cardiovascular disease too soon.”
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, BHF associate medical director and consultant cardiologist, described the situation as “the worst heart care crisis in living memory”.
She added: “Every part of the system providing heart care is damaged, from prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, to crucial research that could give us faster and better treatments. This is happening at a time when more people are getting sicker and need the NHS more than ever.”
Since 2020, the premature death rate for cardiovascular disease has risen year-on-year and latest figures for 2022 show that it has reached 80 in 100,000 in England in 2022 – the highest rate since 2011, the charity warned.
But even before this yearly rise began, there has been a significant slowdown in the rate of improvement since 2012. Between 2012 and 2019, the premature death rate for cardiovascular disease in the UK fell by just 11%, compared with a fall of 33% between 2005 and 2012.
The reasons for the rise are multiple and complex, the BHF said. While increasing pressure on the NHS and the Covid-19 pandemic have likely contributed in recent years, the warning signs have been present for over a decade.
As it argued: “Since 2010, the health gap between rich and poor has significantly widened. The most deprived parts of England have been getting sicker, with stalling improvement in healthy life expectancy and increasing rates of some cardiovascular conditions.”
At the same time, there hasn’t been enough action to address cardiovascular risk factors over the last decade, it has contended. “Millions of people are living with undiagnosed risk factors, such as high blood pressure, raised cholesterol, and diabetes, and nearly two thirds of adults in England have a weight classed as overweight or obese. This is storing up huge problems for the future,” the BHF warned.
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