Heart attack deaths halve in ten years

By Charlotte Beugge

Fewer Britons are dying of heart attacks thanks to a combination of better medical care and prevention measures such as a cut in the amount of people who smoke, new research shows.

According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers in Oxford used hospital and mortality data to analyse 840,175 men and women in England who had suffered a total of 861,134 heart attacks over eight years.

When they compared the figures for 2002 with 2010, they found death rates falling by 50% in men and by 53% in women. The biggest decline in death from heart attack was in the 65 to 74 age group, reports the BBC.

The smallest decline was in the 30 to 54 age group which the study says suggests that rising rates of obesity and diabetes are resulting in more heart problems in younger people.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, told the BBC that the fall in death rates was "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".

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