Residents in Greater Manchester are more at risk of dying prematurely from heart and circulatory diseases than anywhere else in England, new British Heart Foundation statistics show.
Heart disease is the umbrella term for conditions that affect the heart, including heart attacks, angina and heart failure.
There are around 6.4 million people living with Cardiovascular Disease in England, and in Manchester there were around 381 people annually who died prematurely – under the age of 75 – of circulatory diseases between 2019 and 2021.
This statistic is the worst in England, and the second worst in the UK – behind only Glasgow.
“I think historically there hasn’t been enough attention paid to heart disease in Greater Manchester,” said Dr Niall Campbell, a heart specialist in Greater Manchester.
“The reason for that is not that it’s any individuals fault that it’s not under control, it’s sometimes about the services they have access to.”
Dr Campbell is also the Chair of Trustees for NW Hearts, a charity based in Greater Manchester which focuses on improving access to high quality cardiac services facilities and expertise across the county.
The charity started in 2021 as Greater Manchester didn’t have a heart charity focussing solely on the region.
Now, they help fund nine different projects across the county, including one where they fund VR headsets for patients to use while in rehabilitation.
NW Hearts also hopes to raise awareness of the risk factors of heart disease, so people across Greater Manchester can make lifestyle changes in order to prevent developing heart disease, and seek medical help before it is too late.
“One of the important symptoms of heart disease can be chest pain,” Dr Campbell said.
“If you have chest pain that is significant and bothering you that is not going away after 15 minutes, you do need to be seeking urgent medical attention.”
Other symptoms can include breathlessness, feeling dizzy or blacking out or being aware of your heart beating in an abnormal way.
Dr Campbell also emphasised that symptoms should not be ignored and said the public should not be afraid to seek medical help.
“No one is ever going to mind if you call an ambulance, or you go to hospital, and it turns out not to be a heart attack,” he said.
“We would so much rather that somebody called and we can say to you ‘it’s fine’, because actually if it’s not fine then the outcome can be much worse.”
The higher risk of premature heart disease death in Greater Manchester can not be put down to a single cause, and instead Dr Campbell suggests it could be due to a mix of factors, including a lack of access to specialists.
“It’s really about inequalities, it’s the fact that not everybody gets the treatment that they should get,” he said.
“I don’t want to portray a negative picture, because I think here is lots of very good care that goes on in Manchester and there are examples of brilliant people doing brilliant things – but not everybody gets access to that.”
Dr Campbell also stressed that, for heart disease, prevention is better than cure – and said everyone should pay attention to the symptoms their body might be displaying.
“Heart disease can be silent until it actually becomes a problem so that’s why it’s so important to know what your risk factors are,” he said.
“I would say that anybody over the age of at least 40 should know whether they’ve got high blood pressure or not, high cholesterol – they should be being monitored for diabetes – and if they do have those conditions, make sure that they are being adequately treated.”
Feature Image: Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash
