German heart illness and operations:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Over DM 5,000 million ($3,521 million) is spent on cardiac treatment and surgery in Germany per year. Some 1.07 million people need treatment and 256,000 people die of a heart-related illness every year, says Der Spiegel. Annual treatments include: angioplasty (83,000), pacemaker/defibrillators fitted (40,000) and left-atrium catheter examinations (280,378). These figures complement a report on cardiac surgery published earlier this year (see Clinica No 668, p 4).