Circulatory diseases – main cause of death in 2022

In 2022, there were 5.16 million deaths among EU residents; the main causes of death across the EU were circulatory diseases, cancer and respiratory diseases.

Over 1.68 million deaths were caused by circulatory diseases (32.7% of all deaths). Cancer was the second most common cause, with 1.15 million (22.3%) and respiratory diseases came third with 0.36 million (7.0%). 

Other leading causes of death in 2022 were COVID-19 (0.31 million; 6.0%), external causes of morbidity and mortality (0.24 million; 4.7%), diseases of the digestive system (0.22 million; 4.2%), diseases of the nervous system (0.21 million; 4.1%), mental and behavioural disorders (0.21 million; 4.1%) and endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases (0.18 million; 3.5%). 

Source dataset: hlth_cd_aro

This information comes from data on causes of death published by Eurostat. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on causes of death.

For more information

• Statistics Explained article on causes of death
• Thematic section on health
• Database on health

Methodological notes

• Causes of death are classified according to the  European shortlist (86 causes), which is based on the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10).
• The data for COVID-19 reported in this article were calculated by adding the data for the three codes (U071 – COVID-19, virus identified, U072 – COVID-19, virus not identified, U_COV19_OTH – COVID-19, other) for reporting deaths on COVID-19.

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