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Trends in mortality related to venous thromboembolism in the European Union, 2012–2020

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Abstract

We sought to assess the sex- and age-specific trends in venous thromboembolism (VTE) mortality in the 27 European Union Member States (EU-27) between years 2012 and 2020. Data on cause-specific deaths and population numbers by sex for each country of the EU-27 were retrieved through the publicly available European Statistical Office (EUROSTAT) dataset for the years 2012–2020. VTE-related deaths were ascertained when ICD-10 codes I26, I80, and I82.9 were listed as the primary cause of death in the medical death certificate. To calculate annual trends, we assessed the average annual percent change (AAPC) with relative 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using Joinpoint regression. During the study period, 96,037 (55,278 males and 40,759 females) died for VTE. The age-adjusted mortality rate (AAMR) linearly declined from 2.86 (95% CI 2.84–2.90) deaths per 100,000 individuals in 2012 to 2.53 (95% CI 2.50–2.56) deaths per 100,000 population in 2020 [AAPC:  – 2.1% (95% CI  – 3.6 to  – 0.6), p = 0.001] without differences between sexes (p = 0.60). The higher AAMR was observed in some eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Lithuania. On the contrary, the lower AAMR was mainly clustered in the Mediterranean area (Italy, Spain, and Cyprus). Over the last decade, the age-adjusted VTE-related mortality has been continuously declining in most of the in EU-27 Member States. However, some disparities still exist between western and eastern European countries.

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Data availability

The data underlying this article are freely available from the EUROSTAT dataset at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database

Abbreviations

AAMR:

Age-adjusted mortality rate

AAPC:

Average annual percent change

APC:

Annual percent change

CI:

Confidence interval

EUROSTAT:

European Statistical Office

PE:

Pulmonary embolism

VTE:

Venous thromboembolism

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Translational Medicine, University of Ferrara, Via Aldo Moro 8, 44124, Ferrara, Italy

    Marco Zuin

  2. Department of Cardiology, Ospedali Riuniti Padova Sud, Schiavonia, Padua, Italy

    Gianluca Rigatelli

  3. Division of Cardiology, Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri, IRCCS, Gattico-Veruno, Italy

    Pierluigi Temporelli

  4. Department of Cardiology, West Vicenza Hospital, Arzignano, Italy

    Claudio Bilato

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Contributions

Concept and design: MZ and CB. Acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data: MZ, GR, PLT, and CB. Drafting and writing of the manuscript: MZ and GR. Review and editing: CB and PLT. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Marco Zuin.

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Zuin, M., Rigatelli, G., Temporelli, P. et al. Trends in mortality related to venous thromboembolism in the European Union, 2012–2020. Intern Emerg Med (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-024-03550-6

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