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

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.