Radical measures can improve heart attack detection

The British Heart Foundation says that health staff should start checking people’s blood pressure at gyms, barber shops and football stadiums in a bid to cut deaths from heart attacks and strokes.

As the most common cause of heart attacks and strokes, the charity says that nurses should also offer health checks in workplaces and at train stations to help identify the millions of people in England with undiagnosed high blood pressure.

New statistics published by the British Heart Foundation in it’s Turning Back the Tide on Heart and Circulatory Diseases action plan claim that an estimated 115,000 cases of heart and circulatory disease could be prevented over the next ten years in England if diagnosis and treatment of high blood pressure was improved.

The analysis says that an extra 11,500 heart attacks, strokes and other cases of heart and circulatory disease could be prevented each year if England matched Canada’s rates for diagnosis and treatment of high blood pressure over the next decade. England currently lags behind a number of other countries such as Canada, the US and Sweden in preventing, diagnosing and treating heart conditions that lead to heart attacks and stroke.

The aforementioned drive, of increasing access to testing services in non-healthcare settings, should run in conjunction with a national programme to raise awareness of the risk factors for those outcomes, such as smoking, being overweight and eating too much salt.

At present, approximately 16 million adults in England are known to have high blood pressure and many take medication to keep it within a healthy range. However, an estimated 5.7 million other cases are thought to be undiagnosed.

Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation, said: “For too long our health system has been to responding to life threatening heart attacks or strokes, rather than detecting and managing the causes. Unless we radically change our approach, progress made in recent years could reverse the gains made over recent decades, and thousands of lives could be lost prematurely.

“Causes of heart attacks and strokes such as high blood pressure are well known and treatable. Identifying the millions of people who are undiagnosed with these conditions is an open goal that the health service cannot afford to miss; the benefits would be vast. We also have an incredible opportunity in NHS England’s long term plan to make a sea change in the way we treat heart and circulatory disease by improving access to treatment and rehabilitation, and embracing the potential of technology and data science to improve care.”