Heart disease: Scottish data
Detailed data on heart disease, including coronary heart disease (CHD) can be found on the Heart disease area of the PHS website.
Incidence
The number of new cases of CHD decreased over the past decade. The age and sex standardised incidence rate for CHD decreased by 11.9% from 391 per 100,000 population in 2013/14 to 344 in 2022/23.
The age and sex adjusted incidence rate for heart attacks decreased by 8.9% from 238.7 per 100,000 population in 2013/14 to 217.6 in 2022/23.
The age sex standardised incidence rate for CHD increases sharply with age. Across all age groups males are more likely than females to have a new diagnosis of CHD. Ten year trends for CHD and heart attack incidence (numbers, crude rates and age-sex standardised rates) for NHS boards by age group and sex can be found in PHS's Heart Disease publication.
Mortality
The age and sex standardised mortality rate for CHD fell from 159 per 100,000 population in 2013 to 137 in 2022, a reduction of 14% over the last 10 years. The mortality rate increases sharply with age with much higher rates among older people aged 75+. Ten year trends for mortality from all heart disease, CHD and heart attacks (numbers, crude rates and age-sex standardised rates) for NHS boards and local authorities, by age group and sex, can be found in PHS's Heart Disease publication.
Within Scotland, mortality rates remain higher in deprived areas. There has been an overall reduction in mortality in all the deprivation quintiles over the decade 2013-2022. However, the gap between the most and least deprived has been increasing over time. More information is available from the Scottish Government website
Prevalence
In 2022, 5% of all adults reported that they had ever been diagnosed with coronary heart disease (6% of men, 4% of women) - Source: Scottish Health Survey, 2022. More information on prevalence can be found in PHS's Heart Disease publication and ISD's Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) pages.
Hospital discharge data
In the last decade, there was a decreasing trend in the number of discharges from hospital with CHD. Between 2013/14 and 2022/23, the age and sex adjusted discharge rate fell by 19.8% from 1,019 to 818 per 100,000 population. Ten year trends on hospital activity for CHD, heart attack, angina and heart failure (numbers, crude rates and age-sex standardised rates) for NHS boards, by age group and sex, can be found on PHS's Heart Disease publication.
Survival
The percentage of people who survived 30 days or more following their first emergency admission to hospital increased from 91.9% in 2013/14 to 93% in 2022/23, but has changed very little over the last few years. Over the same period, there was a narrowing of the gap in the survival between males and females from 3.4 to 2.9 percentage points. Further information, including survival from heart failure, is provided on PHS's Heart Disease publication.
Primary care data
Prevalence data is now available from the Scottish Primary Care Information Resource (SPIRE) for the last three financial years for CHD and Heart Failure at Scotland level and the figures show a fall for CHD prevalence over the three year period, whereas Heart Failure prevalence remained relatively unchanged. The CHD prevalence fell from 3.90 per 100 people in 2018/19 to 3.60 in 2022/23. The heart failure prevalence remained largely unchanged at 0.9 per 100 people over the same period.
Cardiovascular prescribing
From 2013/14 - 2022/23, the number of patients prescribed cardiovascular related drugs rose from 1.34 million to 1.5 million, an increase of 12.1%. Further information, including the total cost of these same prescription drugs, is provided on PHS's Heart Disease publication.
Ambulance service activity
In the last ten years the number of Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) incidents for people with heart problems decreased from 5,713 to 2,178. The number of conveyances to hospital decreased from 4,996 to 1,850. Further information is provided in PHS's Heart Disease publication.
Standardised rates
Please note all age sex standardised rates listed above are standardised using the 2013 European standard population. For more information, see Appendix A1 of PHS's Heart Disease Statistics Update.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
