In a plea to GPs, experts warn that far fewer patients are now having their hearts listened to – and it’s costing lives
2016, predicted an ‘emerging epidemic’ of heart valve disease in the UK, doubling from 1.5million cases between that year and 2046.
The r ise i s d ue mainly to the ageing population.
In a survey by the charity Heart Valve V oice and the All- P arty Parliamentary Group on Heart Valve Disease, published a few weeks ago, 72 per cent of catheter lab staff said they believed that patients were dying simply because there wasn’t enough capacity in the NHS to treat them.
These are needless losses, as Dr Byrne points out: ‘Every centre faces the same battle to help their patients, and staff sadly watch while patients are denied life-saving treatment due to a lack of capacity.
‘A fast-track pathway for severe aortic stenosis, along with increased, ring -fenced, catheter lab capacity to treat the disease, is the first step to increase access to this life-saving treatment.’
Severe aortic stenosis affects between 2 and 5 per cent of over - 65s, but many are diagnosed with late-stage disease says Dr Stephen Dorman, a consultant cardiologist at University Hospitals Bristol.
‘We keep finding people who arrive with severe aortic stenosis with their heart in failure, when ideally, we’d have caught them five to ten years earlier and had them under a surveillance programme and have been able to time their intervention in a better manner ,’ says Dr Dorman.
‘Another factor is that people dismiss their symptoms as just being down to getting older. While understandably people do “decondition” as they age, if you’ve always been fit and kept yourself in good shape, and you ’ve noticed a dis - tinct change in your exercise tolerance or breathing , that is significant, and worth a doctor listening to your heart with a stethoscope.’
Dr Margaret Ikpoh, the vice chair of professional development at the Royal College of GPs, says: ‘GPs and their teams are working flatout to deliver safe, timely and appropriate care, and are seeing millions more people every month than before the pandemic.
‘But we are doing this with 930 fewer GPs than we had at the end of 2019.’
To help tackle the hidden toll of heart valve disease, a bus run by the Valve for Life initiative, and the charity Heart Valve Voice, has been touring 11 UK cities in the past 18 months offering stethoscope and pulse checks. Around 10 per cent of those screened have needed further investigations for cardiac problems, including heart murmur and irregular heart beat.
Morgan was fortunate that her GP picked up a heart murmur immediately with the stethoscope, telling her it was so severe she needed to go straight to A&E. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was being told,’ says Morgan. ‘ Although I’d felt breathless and had some slight chest pain, it didn’t seem possible that I had such a serious condi - tion. I just thought: “It couldn’t be that bad, surely?” ’
At the hospital her heart was checked with a stethoscope again, and she underwent blood tests to rule out a heart attack . A heart murmur was confirmed, and she was referred for an echocardio - gram, but was told it could take six weeks. Morgan decided to pay £600 for a private echocardiogram as the couple had booked a holiday in the U.S. for Lee’s 60th birthday.
‘I wanted to get the test out of the way so we could get insurance cover for the holiday
— I was still hoping it wouldn’t be anything major,’ she says.
But the news was bad — she had severe aortic stenosis and wouldn’t be going on holiday as she needed prompt open-heart surgery to replace the valve.
‘I was in shock ,’ says Morgan. ‘ A heart surgeon later told me I’d have had only 18 months left if I didn’t have the operation.’
But the backlog from Covid meant a four to six-month wait for surgery on the NHS.
‘ I don ’ t think I would have survived that wait — the stress and toll on my mental health would have been too great aside from the valve problems,’ she added.
Morgan paid privately for the £45,000 operation, cashing in a pension, and had open- heart surgery seven weeks later in April.
She says phlegmatically: ‘My life savings actually saved my life, so I’m not bitter and I certainly don’t regret it. My surgeon told me afterwards that my valve was really badly affected and that I probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer had I waited.’
The surgery has been transformative; within eight weeks, Morgan was able to walk up hills without becoming breathless.
‘It has made such a difference,’ she says. ‘But it’s horrendous that people are dying while they wait for these operations.
‘My advice for anyone experiencing breathlessness is not to ignore it or accept a phone consultation if you have new symptoms — see your doctor face to face and get your heart checked. If I hadn ’t, I wouldn’t be here today.’
‘I used my pension for £45,000 op’