An RCPE event held as part of the Science Festival on Tuesday 8 April 2014
Audience: 50
This event was delivered as part the Science Festival ‘Healthy Lunch’ program within the National Museum of Scotland in association with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
Dr Peter Henriksen and Dr Nick Mills from Edinburgh Heart Centre discussed how coronary heart disease, the cause of heart attacks, remains the UK's biggest killer. Treatment up until the 1970s consisted of several weeks bed rest and the death rate for those lucky enough to survive to hospital was 30%.
Today, heart attack patients will be diagnosed by an ambulance crew and transferred directly to a cardiac centre for emergency coronary stenting to open blocked coronary arteries. Many cases will be home within 2 days.
The 1-hour session explored how science and clinical research have led to improved understanding of mechanism and development of treatments for coronary heart disease. The session described early accounts of coronary disease, angina and myocardial infarction. The role of the Framingham study in eliciting risk factors and development of the cholesterol hypothesis of coronary plaque development were discussed. The audience were given an account of what it is like to experience a heart attack and examples of coronary CT scanning, coronary angiography and recorded footage from inside the cardiovascular laboratory at Edinburgh Heart Centre were used to illustrate current treatments. The event finished with a discussion on progress and how new treatments and health policy have contributed to falling mortality. The prospect of regenerative therapy improving outcomes for patients who have established cardiac damage was highlighted with examples of ongoing work from the Scottish Centre for Regenerative medicine.
A significant proportion of the audience of 50 were coronary heart disease patients and relatives. Questions and discussion covered statins, lifestyle, different symptom presentations and the merits of coronary stenting and coronary artery bypass grafting.