No More Heart Attacks

Can cutting-edge new treatments and therapies put an end to cardiovascular and circulatory disease for good?

- Simon Crompton

Back in 1976, a major medical breakthrough occurred. British researcher Michael Davies discovered that the cause of heart attacks was bloodclots forming in the arteries on the surface of the heart. His finding saved the lives of many patients. Clot- and cholesterol-busting drugs, along with intricate artery-widening procedures, are now used routinely to prevent the artery blockages that deprive heart muscle of oxygen and cause heart attacks.

Fifty years ago, the chance of a person in a First World country dying of heart disease – the term that describes the build-up of fatty ‘plaques’ in the blood vessels on the surface of the heart –was four times higher than today, yet heart disease and heart attacks are still Western society’s biggest killer, taking the lives of one in seven men in the UK, for instance, and twice as many women as breast cancer. But now, new technologies and an explosion of understanding about what makes some people more susceptible to heart attacks is changing the game again. Researchers around the world now see the once pie-in-the-sky idea of ending heart attacks as a realistic, if ambitious, target.

“I think ending heart attacks is definitely something we can now work towards,” says Prof Metin Avkiran, a molecular cardiologist at King’s College London and associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation. “We can definitely have a bigger impact.”