Irish least likely in Europe to have suffered heart problems

Irish people are the least likely in Europe to have recent experience of heart or circulation problems, according to a new study.

The burden imposed by heart disease and stroke in Ireland is also among the lowest of all European countries, the study published in the European Heart Journal indicates.

However, Ireland has not kept pace with other western European countries where heart deaths have fallen to such an extent that cancer is now the main cause of death.

Just 4.3 per cent of Irish people – 5.1 per cent of men and 3.7 per cent of women – reported heart or circulatory problems in the previous 12 months, according to the study. This compares to 17.7 per cent in Poland and 12.8 per cent in Germany.

However, this is not a measure of the incidence of heart disease, the study by researchers at the University of Oxford warns, because it does not indicate whether people might have reported problems more than a year earlier.

Cardiovascular disease accounts for an estimated 35 years of healthy life lost per 1,000 people in Ireland, the lowest of the 48 countries included in the study. This compares to 40 years in France, 46 in the UK and 67 in Germany. The burden imposed by the condition in many eastern European countries is over five times higher than in Ireland.

Mortality rate

Cardiovascular disease causes more than 4 million deaths each year across Europe, or 45 per cent of all deaths. This is in spite of big reductions in the mortality rate in Europe over the past decade.

While most of these deaths occur in over 75-year-olds, almost 700,000 people under the age of 65 die from the condition every year.

More women die from heart disease overall, but men account for a clear majority of fatalities among under-65s.

Because the death rate from heart disease is falling, cancer now accounts for a greater number of deaths than heart disease in 12 western European countries, according to the most recent international figures. But heart disease is still a bigger killer than cancer in Ireland.

Nonetheless, the death rate from cardiovascular disease in Ireland has fallen 38 per cent for men, and 35 per cent for women, in the decade to 2012, the study shows.

Research leader Dr Nick Townsend said: "These figures highlight the wide inequalities between European countries in deaths from cardiovascular disease (CVD). The 12 countries in which cancer has overtaken CVD as the main cause of death are all found in western Europe, with nine of them having been members of the EU before 2004. The highest numbers of deaths from CVD tend to be seen in eastern European countries.

“We need more research into why some countries are showing improved outcomes, while others are not.”