Cancer passes heart disease as No 1 killer
CANCER has overtaken cardiovascular disease for the first time as Britain’s biggest cause of death.
A vast improvement in the prevention and treatment of heart attacks and strokes has seen cardiovascular deaths plummet, according to Oxford University scientists.
Wide uptake of cholesterolbusting statins, healthier lifestyles and better medical practices mean that people are less likely to have a heart problem, and if they do they are more likely to survive.
Cancer rates, meanwhile, are gradually increasing as people live longer and access to expensive new drugs is failing to keep up with demand.
Researchers last night revealed that fatalities from the disease had overtaken heart deaths among women in 2014 – the most recent data available – as they did for men in 2011. It means that for the first time, cancer is the number one cause of death for the population as a whole.
Study leader Dr Nick Townsend said: ‘Fewer people are having a cardiovascular event and more are surviving them.
‘We are seeing reductions in the causes of cardiovascular disease, with dramatic decreases in smoking rates in particular.’
There have also been big improvements in treatments, he said, with specialised heart units and use of stents in hospitals, meaning people who do have heart attacks and strokes are more likely to survive.
Dr Townsend, whose work is published in the European Heart Journal, said lifestyle factors – drinking, smoking, diet and exercise – have an impact on roughly 85 per cent of cases of cardiovascular disease. For cancer, lifestyle is responsible for between 40 and 50 per cent of cases, with the remainder caused by genetics and other factors.
This means the improvements in lifestyle seen over the past 50 years in Britain have had a much bigger impact on heart disease than on cancer. For some forms of the disease, there is also a ‘lag’ in impact. Lung cancer rates, for example, are at their highest-ever level, partly because women who started smoking in the 1970s are just beginning to see the effects.
But age is the biggest reason for continually increasing cancer rates. More than three-quarters of all people diagnosed with cancer in the UK are over 60.
Britain’s ageing population means more people than ever will reach the age where they are at risk of being diagnosed with the illness.
Dr Mike Knapton, of the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘Our research has helped halve the annual number of deaths from cardiovascular disease since the BHF was created more than 50 years ago. This study is a reminder of the tremendous progress but we cannot be complacent.’
‘Dramatic decrease in smoking rates’