Heart attack deaths fell by half in eight years

The reduced toll offers further evidence of one of the biggest successes by the NHS since 2000.

A study in the British Medical Journal says efforts to stop smoking, manage high blood pressure and high cholesterol have helped cut the numbers having an attack. Further improvements in hospital care have also contributed.

Results from 860,000 heart attacks in England between 2002-10 show death rates dropped by about half, while the rate of heart attack occurrence fell by a third. The study found 36 per cent of heart attacks were fatal and 70 per cent of sudden deaths occurred without admission to hospital. The biggest fall in heart attacks and deaths was among the middle aged.

Researchers from the Department of Public Health at Oxford said just over half of the decline in deaths could be linked to a fall in new heart attacks and the remainder was due to a decline in death rates following heart attacks.

Prof Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study, said: “This impressive fall in death rates is due partly to prevention of heart attacks by better management of risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol and due partly to better treatment of heart attack patients when they reach hospital.

“But far too many heart attack victims still die from a cardiac arrest before medical help arrives.”