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Causes of death and health conditions in the UK

53 causes of death, each with the number of deaths registered every year since 2001 in England and Wales by sex and age, the ONS age-standardised death rate, figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland from National Records of Scotland and NISRA, and, where they exist, NHS figures for England on people living with the condition and hospital admissions. Causes are named as the Office for National Statistics names the ICD-10 groupings; the latest England and Wales year is 2025.

Heart and circulation

Cancer

Lungs and breathing

Mental and nervous system

Other conditions

Injuries and external causes

About these figures

Some groupings overlap: heart attacks are part of ischaemic heart diseases, and each cancer site is part of all cancers, so the numbers on this page should not be added together. For the leading causes of death overall, see questions on deaths and life expectancy.

How these figures are compiled

Each death is counted once, under its underlying cause: the disease or injury that started the chain of events leading to death, as certified by a doctor or coroner and coded by the ONS to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Other conditions mentioned on a death certificate are not counted.

Figures are for deaths registered in each year, which can differ from deaths that occurred in it, especially for deaths referred to a coroner. England and Wales figures include deaths of people who lived elsewhere, as the ONS headline figures do, and exclude babies under 28 days old, whose deaths are not given an underlying cause. Figures for 2001 to 2012 are summed by this site from the ONS 21st century mortality files; figures from 2013 are from ONS mortality statistics on Nomis. ONS's leading-causes list leaves out all deaths under the age of 1, so its counts can be slightly lower than the yearly totals here.

The ONS notes that “there are some discontinuities in the trend data … due to changes in the cause coding of deaths” and that “there have also been several updates to the software used for coding cause of death”. Its user guide to mortality statistics explains which causes are affected.

The age-standardised rate is the ONS's: the death rate per 100,000 people adjusted to the 2013 European Standard Population so that years, sexes and places with different age structures can be compared. The ONS publishes it for England and Wales residents from 2013.

Scotland and Northern Ireland figures are counted by their own registrars using the same ICD-10 codes, except where a page notes otherwise. They are not added to the England and Wales figures because each nation publishes on a different timetable.

Sources and receipts

Every condition page reads from these workbooks, plus its own ONS mortality extract from Nomis, listed on that page. The SHA-256 is the fingerprint of the file as downloaded, so a later change at the source can be detected.

These pages state official figures. They give no view on whether a figure is high or low. To report an error, send a correction request.