Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of stress on heart failure.

Jane Ellison

Information onsurvival rates for patients who suffer an out of hospital heart attack or an out of hospital cardiac arrest are not collected centrally.

The British Heart Foundation suggests that between 2-12% of people treated by the emergency services after suffering an out of hospital cardiac arrest survive to be discharged from hospital.

The Department has made no assessment of the effect of stress on heart failure, nor has it made any estimate of heart attacks among workers who work 40 or 60 hours per week.

However, researchers analysing data from the Whitehall II study observed that people who believed stress was significantly affecting their health had double the risk of suffering from coronary heart disease, compared to people who did not believe stress was having an impact.