Cancer tops heart disease as leading cause of death in 12 European countries

Cardiovascular disease has been the top killer of people for decades, but cancer is now the top cause of death in 12 European counties, according to the European Society of Cardiology.

Worldwide cardiovascular disease (CVD) kills 17.3 million people, four million in Europe, approximately 45 percent of all deaths in the region. Treating and preventing this disease has improved over the years, making room for the rise in cancer deaths to top the list.

In 10 of the 15 countries in the European union, more men are dying of cancer than CVD. These countries are not ones that are struggling to care for their people. They are among the most developed in the E.U. The countries include Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and the U.K. For women, cancer is the leading cause of death in Denmark.

"These figures highlight the wide inequalities between European countries in deaths from CVD,” said Nick Townsend, senior researcher at the BHF Centre on Population Approaches for Non-Communicable Disease Prevention at the University of Oxford. “The 12 countries in which cancer has overtaken CVD as the main cause of death are all found in Western Europe, with nine of them having been members of the EU before 2004. The highest numbers of deaths from CVD tend to be seen in Eastern European countries."

The first country where cancer top CVD as the top cause of death was in France in 2011, where 92,375 men died from cancer and 64,659 died from CVD. The next country where cancer surpassed CVD was in Spain in 2013 where 67,711 men died from cancer and 53,487 died from CVD in 2013. In that same year, the U.K. joined France and Spain where 87,511 men died from cancer and 79,935 from CVD.

"Although we have seen progress across Europe in the prevention and treatment of CVD, leading to decreases in mortality from it, it is clear that such progress is not consistent across the continent," said Townsend. "With higher mortality from CVD still found in Eastern Europe and non-EU countries, it is clear that the progress that has been made in Western Europe and most EU countries is yet to be achieved equally throughout the region."