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 and within the Scottish Cardiac Audit Programme (SCAP).
Incidence
The number of new cases of CHD decreased over the past decade. The age and sex standardised incidence rate for CHD decreased by 13.4% from 377 per 100,000 population in 2014/15 to 326 in 2023/24.
The age and sex adjusted incidence rate for heart attacks decreased by 6.8% from 226.1 per 100,000 population in 2014/15 to 210.6 in 2023/24.
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 or SCAP..
Mortality
The age and sex standardised mortality rate for CHD fell from 148 per 100,000 population in 2014 to 130 in 2023, a reduction of 12% 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 or SCAP.
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 2014-2023. 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 2023, 4% of all adults reported that they had ever been diagnosed with coronary heart disease (5% of men, 4% of women) - Source: Scottish Health Survey, 2023. More information on prevalence can be found in PHS's Heart Disease publication and PHS's Primary Care Disease Prevalence data pages.
Hospital discharge data
In the last decade, there was a decreasing trend in the number of discharges from hospital with CHD. Between 2014/15 and 2023/24, the age and sex adjusted discharge rate fell by 16.6% from 975 to 813 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 or SCAP.
Survival
The percentage of people who survived 30 days or more following their first emergency admission to hospital increased from 93.3% in 2014/15 to 94.8% in 2023/24, 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 2.7 to 1.7 percentage points. Further information, including survival from heart failure, is provided on PHS's Heart Disease publication or SCAP.
Ambulance service activity
In the last six years the number of Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) incidents for people with heart problems decreased from 2,751 to 2,332. The number of conveyances to hospital decreased from 2,603 to 2,129. Further information is provided in PHS's Heart Disease publication or SCAP.
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.
