Heart attack deaths down 60% in Nottingham
DEATHS from heart attacks at Nottingham's hospitals have dropped by more than 60 per cent – even though the number of sufferers has risen.
The city's high number of smokers and obese people has been blamed for a 14 per cent rise in the number of local heart attack patients – from 1,415 to 1,618 – at Nottingham City Hospital and the Queen's Medical Centre over the last ten years.
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But doctors have managed to reduce the number of fatalities from 319 in 2002 to just 126 in 2011, a 10 per cent bigger drop than the national average.
Dr John Walsh, head of cardiology services at Nottingham University Hospitals, said he was "pleased and encouraged" by the results.
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"We've done well, but the rise in heart attack admissions shows we've got a long way to go," he said.
Dr Walsh said he believed the fall in deaths was down to a "team effort" by every part of the NHS in Notts, and the expertise of the City Hospital's Trent Cardiac Centre which opened in 2005 and became a specific heart attack centre for the East Midlands in 2011.
The centre boasts the quickest times in the East Midlands for getting patients from the hospital door onto the surgery table, as 51-year-old Debbie Winterburn, of Sutton-in-Ashfield, found out when she had a heart attack a week ago today.
She said: "As soon as I arrived they gave me a numbing injection. Because I was operated on so quickly, doctors said there was no lasting damage to my heart."
Comments
by jennywitch
Wednesday, March 14 2012, 7:55AM
“Two things are worth mentioning here:
1.How far are these figures the result of erroneous diagnoses? A family member with a benign congenital heart condition was wrongly admitted to the City as having had a heart attack; staff refused to acknowledge his actual conditiondespite the evidence provided by previously-done ECGs, insisted on "treating" a non-existent "heart attack victim", and no doubt still include him in their list of patients whose lives they have saved. It's pretty easy to save a life that was never for a moment in danger.
2. It's financially very advantageous for GPs to accept diagnoses of heart problems since that allows them to push for many years the standard cocktail of drugs which require no more than constant repeat prescriptions with a cursory check by some practice nurse every year or so. That patients survive swallowing all these things proves perhaps that their constitutions are strong ones; it's hard to prove a negative, that they might well have lived as long or longer without taking all the profitable gunk pushed by Big Pharma and money-making GPs.”
by kpi99
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 9:22PM
“I've had it then.”
by MR_B_NOTTM
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 9:07PM
“I would say being obese is a bigger factor than being a smoker. A lot of smokers are still fit and play sports/ take exercise on a regular basis.”
by MR_B_NOTTM
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 8:53PM
“spot on tug_f”
by kpi99
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 8:53PM
“Which is the biggest risk factor? Smoking tabs or being fat?”
by tug_f
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 8:45PM
“Smoking is only One of the possible causes, but it seems that being a smoker or being Fat are the only causes, time to cast the net a bit further.”
by mattgaltress
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 7:43PM
“Tug_f, the fact is that smoking is a contributary factor.”
by tug_f
Tuesday, March 13 2012, 2:20PM
“So once again they blame lifestyle for heart attacks although there are many many causes of heart attacks, the point of these figures show that Better Treatment saves lives. The smoking rate has remained just about constant over the past many years, so why the increase in heart attacks, could it have something to do with the Stress people face, something that Smoking is known to reduce. It is time to look at " other " causes.”