The UK vs Sweden: Is the NHS really so bad?
Author and article information
Abstract
Sheng-Chia Chung and colleagues report in The Lancet (23 January 2014) an international comparison of cardiovascular patient mortality between the UK and Sweden. They suggest that “more than 10000 deaths at 30 days would have been prevented or delayed had UK patients experienced the care of their Swedish counterparts.” Further, they estimate that 1741 deaths would have been prevented in the UK had the Swedish pattern of primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and beta-blocker use been replicated in the NHS from 2004 to 2010. However, their study does not provide convincing evidence that faster uptake of primary PCI or beta-blockers on discharge would have had an effect on cardiovascular patient mortality in the UK.
Cite this as
2014. The UK vs Sweden: Is the NHS really so bad? PeerJ PrePrints 2:e253v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.253v1Sections
Additional Information
Competing Interests
ENL, LG and CW are employed by University College London (UCL) and work within the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR). ENL, LG, TQ and CW are members of the Steering Group of the Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project at NICOR. Some of the authors of The Lancet paper on which we comment are also UCL employees and members of NICOR, who will appraise ENL, LG and CW.
Author Contributions
Emmanuel N Lazaridis analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Lucia Gavalova wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Simon Jones reviewed drafts of the paper.
Tom Quinn reviewed drafts of the paper.
Clive Weston wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Funding
There was no funding for this work.
