Appeal to help fund cutting edge heart research in Blackburn and Darwen (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Appeal to help fund cutting edge heart research in Blackburn and Darwen

11:00pm Monday 24th September 2012 in News By Catherine Pye, Health reporter

MORE than 1,330 people in Blackburn with Darwen are currently living with heart problems, new research has shown.

And in the North West there are 60,386 people living with heart failure, but despite the prevalence of the condition in the region, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) study showed that almost three quarters of people in the North West are unaware of the effect that heart failure can have on people’s lives.

Forty five per cent of people in the region believe that heart failure means that your heart stops working, 16 per cent believe people who suffer from heart failure die instantly, while nearly a third, mistakenly, thinks that once the heart has been damaged it is able to repair itself.

Now the BHF has launched a campaign to challenge the misconceptions, using the image of a drowning man to illustrate how severe heart failure can cause people’s lungs to fill with fluid, leaving them struggling to breathe.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the BHF, said: “More and more people are surviving heart attacks due to the huge advances we’ve made in cardiology, but that isn’t the end of the story.

“A heart attack causes damage which can leave a person facing an horrendous daily struggle.”

The BHF believe there is hope to cure heart failure and their Mend-ing Broken Hearts Appeal is seeking support from Blackburn and Darwen — which have Heart Town status, benefiting from BHF’s range of resources and education — to fund regenerative medicine research.

The cutting edge research programme involves stem cell research and dev-elopmental biology to work out how to repair or replace damaged heart muscle.

Prof Weissberg added: “We believe a cure for heart failure is a goal we can achieve.

“We want to advance the science so that when someone has a heart attack, doctors have the tools to help repair the heart.

“What we need now is for the public to help us fund this research and take it from the laboratory bench to the hospital bedside.”

Support this BHF research at bhf.org.uk/ findthecure