Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their estimate of the number of people with atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is often asymptomatic and not always detected. As a result many people have undiagnosed AF. Estimates have been produced to quantify the size of the undetected problem.

According to the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) the number of persons with atrial fibrillation in England is 883,938, or 1.6% of the population (2013/14 data). A copy of the QOF data is attached.

Another estimate of AF is based on the study “Estimating the prevalence of atrial fibrillation in a general population using validated electronic health data”. According to these estimates, the number of persons with AF in England is 1,363,321, or 2.4% of the population (2013/14 data). This study implies that up to one third of AF cases are not reported. A copy of this study is attached.