Causes of death in people with cardiovascular disease: a UK Biobank cohort study

Background

Therapeutic advances have reduced cardiovascular death rates in people with cardiovascular diseases (CVD). We aimed to define the rates of cardiovascular and noncardiovascular death in people with specified CVDs or accruing cardiovascular multimorbidity.

Methods and Results

We studied 493 280 UK residents enrolled in the UK Biobank cohort study. The proportion of deaths attributed to cardiovascular, cancer, infection, or other causes were calculated in groups defined by 9 distinct self‐reported CVDs at baseline, or by the number of these CVDs at baseline. Poisson regression analyses were then used to define adjusted incidence rate ratios for these causes of death, accounting for sociodemographic factors and comorbidity. Of 27 729 deaths, 20.4% were primarily attributed to CVD, 53.6% to cancer, 5.0% to infection, and 21.0% to other causes. As cardiovascular multimorbidity increased, the proportion of cardiovascular and infection‐related deaths was greater, contrasting with cancer and other deaths. Compared with people without CVD, those with 3 or more CVDs experienced adjusted incidence rate ratios of 7.0 (6.2–7.8) for cardiovascular death, 4.4 (3.4–5.6) for infection death, 1.5 (1.4–1.7) for cancer death, and 2.0 (1.7–2.4) for other causes of death. There was substantial heterogeneity in causes of death, both in terms of crude proportions and adjusted incidence rate ratios, among the 9 studied baseline CVDs.

Conclusions

Noncardiovascular death is common in people with CVD, although its contribution varies widely between people with different CVDs. Holistic and personalized care are likely to be important tools for continuing to improve outcomes in people with CVD.