National mortality statistics for heart failure
In 2001, just over 11,500 deaths due to heart failure were officially recorded in the UK. However, the number of deaths attributed to heart failure in national mortality statistics is likely to be a huge underestimate of the actual number of deaths caused by heart failure. Guidance on death certificates - that heart failure is not a cause but a mode of death – explicitly discourages doctors from noting heart failure as the underlying cause of death. This means that other causes of death, such as coronary heart disease, are more commonly given as the cause of death in the death certificates of people with heart failure.
Survival after a diagnosis of heart failure
Prognosis from heart failure is poor. Data from the London Heart Failure Study show that around 40% of people die within one year of an initial diagnosis of heart failure.
Comparing one-year survival rates for heart failure with those for a number of common cancers shows that prognosis from heart failure is relatively poor. The one-year survival rate for heart failure is worse than those for breast, prostate and bladder cancer, better than those for lung and stomach cancer, and very similar to that for cancer of the colon.
Better estimates of mortality from heart failure
1. From incidence rates in the Hillingdon Heart Failure Study we estimate that there are just around 63,500 new cases of heart failure each year in the UK. Applying a 62% one-year survival rate to this figure, means that just over 24,100 of those diagnosed from heart failure die within a calendar year.
