Stroke is a major cause of mortality in the UK, accounting for around 53,000 deaths every year (around 9% of all deaths). As a single cause of death, stroke is second only to coronary heart disease as the biggest killer in the UK. Stroke is also a major cause of premature mortality, responsible for over 9,500 deaths every year in people under the age of 75, about one in twenty of all deaths in this age group.

There are a number of different forms of stroke, including subarachnoid haemorrhage, haemorrhagic stroke and ischaemic stroke. It is often difficult for medical practitioners to identify the particular stroke subtype without access to evidence from autopsy or a brain scan. Therefore a large number of stroke mortalities are recorded as either ‘unspecified stroke’ or ‘other cerebrovascular disease’. Because of this, it is not possible to know exactly how many deaths are caused each year by the individual stroke subtypes.