Sudden deaths and hospital admissions (FOI)

Request 

A

How many deaths for each of year 2018 through to today have been recorded as "sudden" or "unexplained" - or similar wording. Please break down into gender and age category.

B

How many attendances at Hospital for each of year 2018 through to today have been recorded as being the result of (1) Heart attack, (2) Cardiac Arrest, (3) Stroke, (4) Myocarditis. Please break down into gender and age category.

C

With ref to (B) above, for 2021 and 2022 please also break down into month by month.

Response

A

All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision

(International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Heath Problems 10th Revision (icd.who.int)  

From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by World Health Organisation (WHO) as:

i)

the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or

ii)

the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury

In Jersey, deaths where "Sudden Adult Death Syndrome" or "Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome" are mentioned on the death certificate are recorded with an ICD-10 code of R96 or I49.9 respectively.

A death certificate of an infant (under one year old) which mentions "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome" are coded with ICD-10 code R95.

Sudden Cardiac Death is recorded with an ICD-10 code of I46.1.

As the numbers are small, the Public Health Intelligence Team are unable to provide a breakdown of these figures by age or gender or age as it may lead to the identification of individuals and breach the confidentiality of their personal information. Therefore, Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals. 

Deaths where ICD-10 codes R96, I49.9, R95 and I46.1 are mentioned:

*Numbers rounded to nearest 5 

Source: Public Health Intelligence Mortality Database, from data recorded by Office of the Superintendent Registrar, and Viscount's Department.  

Please note that Mortality figures for 2021 will be published in-line with the Public Health Intelligence Publication Release Schedule:  

Public Health Intelligence publication release schedule (gov.je) 

B and C

Clinical Coding of a patient's admission is carried out after discharge from hospital and is not available through to current date. Data has been provided for 2018 to 2021 inclusive, as the last completed year. Attendances at hospital that do not result in admission are not subject to Clinical Coding.

Data for admissions in which a patient was diagnosed with either a myocardial infarction (heart attack) or a stroke for the period 2017 – 2021 is publicly available in response to a previous Freedom of Information response. Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Admissions to hospital for heat attack and stroke FOI (gov.je) 

The data provided in the table below represents all cases where either myocarditis or cardiac arrest with successful resuscitation were confirmed at presentation or in the course of an admission, irrespective of the reason for attendance or main condition treated.

Data is derived from reporting by discharge date. As such, patients who were admitted prior to 1st January 2018 but discharged after this date will be included. For the same reason, patients admitted prior to 31st December 2021 but discharged after this date will not be included in the numbers.

Where numbers are small, disclosure control has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals and numbers fewer than five are represented as '<5'. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Data Source: Hospital Patient Administration System (TrakCare, Report CDG4G)

Due to small numbers, Health and Community Services are unable to provide a further breakdown of these figures by month for these conditions. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals.

The following ICD-10 codes were used to extract this data:

I01.2:  Acute rheumatic myocarditis                                      

I09.0:  Rheumatic myocarditis                                               

I40.0:  Infective myocarditis                                      

I40.1:  Isolated myocarditis                                       

I40.8:  Other acute myocarditis                                             

I40.9:  Acute myocarditis, unspecified                                               

I41.0*: Myocarditis in bacterial diseases classified elsewhere                                             

I41.1*: Myocarditis in viral diseases classified elsewhere                                        

I41.2*: Myocarditis in other infectious and parasitic diseases classified elsewhere                                    

I41.8*: Myocarditis in other diseases classified elsewhere

I51.4:  Myocarditis, unspecified         

I46.0: Cardiac arrest with successful resuscitation                                                               

Instances of cardiac arrest without successful resuscitation have not been included. Where this occurs without admission this would not be captured by Clinical Coding. Where this occurs after admission, this would not represent a reason for attendance. As such, this information falls outside of the scope of this Freedom of Information request.

Articles applied

Article 23 - Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.