ESC cardiovascular statistics ESC Atlas of Cardiology

A quick and easy way to discover cardiovascular disease statistics from 56 countries across Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

Cardiovascular disease is the world's biggest killer. In pursuing its core mission, to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease, the ESC promotes evidence-based policy-making and actively contributes to evidence-generating initiatives to inform or help design effective health policies aimed at improving cardiovascular health.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in numbers...

CVD remains a leading health challenge in ESC member countries, responsible for more than 3 million deaths — equivalent to 355 deaths every hour.
While more men than women die prematurely from CVD overall, financial deprivation affects women more severely. Only 7% of women's CVD deaths are premature in high-income countries, compared with 25% in middle-income countries.
The rate of healthy life-years lost due to CVD attributable to particulate-matter air pollution is 9 times higher in middle-income countries than in high-income countries.
Females comprised 50% of cardiologists working in middle-income countries but representation was markedly lower in high-income countries (31.3%). Underrepresentation was even more pronounced in specialized fields: women accounted for just 11.5% of interventional cardiologists and only 8.8% of cardiac surgeons.