Research shows that almost 1,000 Britons suffer cardiac arrest during surgery every year

More than 900 people suffer cardiac arrest on the operating table every year, according to an NHS study.

This involves a small proportion of the total number of operations – about 0.03 percent or 3 in 10,000 – and half are resuscitated and survive long enough to go home.

The NHS says it is “very rare” for healthy people to die under anesthesia during planned operations, with a rate of around one in 100,000.

Experts from the University of Bristol looked at data from all UK NHS hospitals from June 2021 to June 2022.

They found that patients over 75 years of age and those undergoing trauma surgery are at greatest risk of their heart stopping during or shortly after general anesthesia.

The rate is lower than estimates from the US (5.7 per 10,000) or Brazil (13 per 10,000).

Dr. Fiona Donald, from the Royal College of Anesthetists, said: “Several million patients undergo surgery every year and this shows that their risk of cardiac arrest is very low.”

The study found evidence of more than 900 cardiac arrests in approximately 300 hospitals and used information from 881 patients for the analysis.

Experts wrote in the journal Anesthesia that people had a greater chance of survival than if they suffered a cardiac arrest at home or in another hospital ward.

Professor Tim Cook, from the University of Bristol, said: “Eighty percent of patients were successfully resuscitated and more than half managed to leave hospital.

“To put this into context, only 23 percent of patients who go into cardiac arrest elsewhere in the hospital survive to leave.”

Bristol NHS consultant Dr Jasmeet Soar added: “As patients undergoing surgery have become older and less healthy over the past decade, it is inevitable that major complications will arise, including cardiac arrest.”