Cardiac arrests reported in the UK 2019 to 2021

FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3544

You asked

Please supply ​the number of cardiac arrests reported year on year for calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021 in the UK as a whole.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We are responsible for the production of mortality for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

We do not hold information on the number of reported cardiac arrests in England and Wales. We are only notified of deaths of the involvement of a cardiac arrest following a death registration. If the cardiac arrest was deemed to be the underlying cause of death or a contributing factor by a certifying doctor, then this would be published in our mortality figures.

If an individual suffered a cardiac arrest and then recovered, we would not obtain that information. NHS Digital may be able to provide this information. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk, and by telephone at 0300 303 5678.

However, we do hold mortality data for deaths due to cardiac arrest for deaths that were registered between 2013-2020. This information is available as part of the explorable dataset on our NOMIS webservice. Deaths due to cardiac arrest are coded to I46.

• Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).
• Select Age - All ages or 5-year age bands.
• Select Gender - Total or Male/Female
• Select rates - All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.
• Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available). (I46)
• Select format (Excel or CSV for example)  

We have extracted the data from NOMIS for you for deaths in 2019 and 2020, please see below:

Deaths Registered in England and Wales in 2021 will be published in July 2022, the confirmed publication date will be available on our Release Calendar in due course.

As such, the information you have requested for 2021 is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.

We do however hold provisional mortality data estimates for 2021 and we can provide you with a bespoke service based on the 2021 data however as this data is provisional it is subject to change. Such services are subject to legal frameworks, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please email Health Data on Health.Data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there will be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.