The Killers

The top three things that kill us are shown below in the graph from the UK Office for National Statistics [ONS]

chart-1


Circulatory Disease

This means coronary heart disease [including heart attack and the ultimate cause of death in chronic cases ie heart failure], often abbreviated to CHD.
Stroke [a brain attack] is when the same ischaemic process occurs in the cerebral circulation.

This is an ‘ischaemic’, meaning ‘poor blood flow’ process caused by arterial damage. The arteries become inflamed, narrowed and inflexible due to a combination of effects such as cholesterol build up, hypertensive damage, diabetes, the effects of smoking and age. Blood supply to the organs is reduced and eventually a sudden blockage can cause serious tissue damage and even death.


Cancer

This is a catchall term for many different diseases, the process of ‘out of control’ cells and the presence of ‘tumours’ is broadly similar but the causes and ultimate behaviour of the conditions vary greatly.

The top 3 cancers are lung [trachea, bronchus and lung]; large bowel [colon, sigmoid, rectum and anus] and prostate.


Leading causes of mortality for males, UK & Wales 2010, by percentage

Condition – in rank order %
Ischaemic heart diseases [CHD] 17.1
Cerebrovascular diseases 7.1
Cancer of trachea, bronchus and lung 7.1
Chronic lung diseases [smoking] 5.5
Influenza and Pneumonia 4.5
Cancer of prostate 4.1
Cancer of colon, sigmoid, rectum and anus 3.2
Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease 3.1
Cancer of lymphoid, haematopoietic and related tissue 2.4
Diseases of the liver 2.0

chart-2


Are some deaths avoidable?

Of course we all have to die of something eventually, but it is possible to calculate the deaths that should not have occurred so early, where factors such as smoking could have been removed and the death prevented at that time.

In 2010, the mortality rate for cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms considered avoidable was 54.8 and 64.0 per 100,000 respectively [reference ONS 2012]

Respiratory disease

This cause is 4th on the list. It mainly means the consequences of smoking [other than lung cancer which is listed separately]. So there are small numbers of young men dying from Asthma and its complications, but the principal issue is COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]. In COPD smoking-induced lung damage reduces oxygen transfer through the lungs and men die of either respiratory failure or secondary heart failure [this occurs because the diseased lungs strain heart function].