Sudden death and cardiac arrest in people aged 5 to 45 in 2018 to 2022

FOI Ref: ​FOI/2023/4870

You asked

​Please supply ONS data regarding sudden death and/or cardiac arrest from the ages of 5 to 45 For the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.

We said

Thank you for your request.

Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration.

All conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). The coded mortality data available up to end of December 2019 is coded to version 2014 of the ICD10 framework. From all these causes, an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by World Health Organisation (WHO) as:

a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or

b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury

The ICD-10 code for Sudden Adult Death Syndrome is R96, however we also can look at I49.9 Cardiac Arrythmia and I46.1 Sudden Cardiac Death.

The ICD-10 code for Cardiac arrest is I46.

You can access annual mortality figures where the above ICD-10 codes are the underlying cause of death between 2013-2021 by using the interactive dataset available on our NOMIS webservice.

Please see the associated download from NOMIS showing the above ICD0-10 codes in England and Wales (total mortality including non-residents and the figures for non-residents) by 5-year age group from age 5 to age 44.

If you would like further disaggregation such as age, sex, lower geography, or additional ICD-10 codes, please see the following instructions:

• Select dates (2013 to 2021)

• 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)
• Select format (Excel or CSV for example)  

Historic data is available in our 21st Century mortality dataset, which provides the number of deaths per ICD-10 code by 5-year age band in England and Wales.

2022 data is still provisional to allow the inclusion of late registrations which are deaths referred for Coroner investigation. This data will be available in NOMIS and in the Deaths Registered Series in July 2023.

However, we have produced a user requested data set for deaths due to and involving Sudden Adult Death. We use the term "due to "to indicate underlying cause of death and "involving" when it is a contributory mention. This is accessible via the following link: Deaths "involving" or "due to" Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.

Further analysis by age for these conditions for 2018 to 2022 can be requested as bespoke analysis.

User requested datasets are subject to disclosure control, legal frameworks, resources and agreement to costs under the ONS Charging policy.

If you would like to discuss this further, or to obtain a quote for this work please contact the Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight (HAPI) Customer Service team at Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.