Cardiovascular disease in Europe — epidemiological update 2015

This article provides an update for 2015 on the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD), with a particular focus on coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, across the countries of Europe. Cardiovascular disease is still the most common cause of death within Europe, causing almost two times as many deaths as cancer across the continent. Although there is clear evidence, where data are available, that mortality from CHD and stroke has decreased substantially over the last 5–10 years, there are still large inequalities found between European countries, in both current rates of death and the rate at which these decreases have occurred. Similarly, rates of treatment, particularly surgical intervention, differ widely between those countries for which data are available, indicating a range of inequalities between them. This is also the first time in the series that we use the 2013 European Standard Population (ESP) to calculate age-standardized death rates (ASDRs). This new standard results in ASDRs around two times as large as the 1976 ESP for CVD conditions such as CHD but changes little the relative rankings of countries according to ASDR.