The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has issued a new warning about the rising number of premature deaths from cardiovascular disease (CVD) in England.
In 2022 alone, more than 39,000 English citizens under the age of 75 died from heart attacks, coronary heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular complications. Not only is this the highest that number has been since 2008, the group said, but it also represents the third straight year that England’s total number of premature deaths from CVD has increased.
“For more than half a century, pioneering research and medical advances helped us make huge strides towards reducing heart attack and stroke deaths,” Dr. Charmaine Griffiths, BHF CEO, said in a statement. “But this has been followed by a lost decade of progress in which far too many people have lost loved ones to CVD too soon. We can stop this heartbreak, but only if politicians unite to address the preventable causes of heart disease, cut long waiting lists for people who need lifesaving heart and stroke care, and help power scientific breakthroughs to unlock revolutionary new treatments and cures.”
The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on heart health all over the world, of course, but the BHF emphasized in its advisory that “the warning signs have been present for over a decade.” Life expectancies stopped increasing after years of improvement, for example, and “undiagnosed risk factors” such as high blood pressure and diabetes are on the rise. In addition, nearly two out of three adults in England are overweight or obese.
“I find it tragic that we’ve lost hard-won progress to reduce early death from cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Sonya Babu-Narayan, BHF associate medical director and a consultant cardiologist, added in the same statement. “Furthermore, we are still seeing more people than expected die from cardiovascular conditions overall—more than any other disease group. It’s clear to me that urgent intervention is long overdue.”
The BHF’s primary role in England is raising funds to improve cardiovascular research, and its warning ends with a call for funding in that area to improve.
“Research we’ve funded has led to lifesaving discoveries—from understanding the causes of heart attacks and how to treat them to artificial intelligence to analyze heart scans, helping doctors to detect heart disease more quickly and accurately than ever,” the group wrote. “But with cardiovascular disease still causing around a quarter of all U.K. deaths, we need to accelerate the pace at which we translate promising science into revolutionary breakthroughs. To ensure research funders like us can continue to make lifesaving discoveries, we need a thriving research and development ecosystem in the U.K.”
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.