Introduction
Emergency diagnosis and classification for immediate specialist treatment for chronic cardiovascular disease (CVD), is central to the management of the 110,000 patients presenting with acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) each year in England, and to reducing the enormous burden of disability from stroke.
Advances in the prevention and cure of CVD have greatly reduced the rate of CV death, however, improved survival rates in an ageing population now result in seven million more people living with CVD in the UK, incurring NHS costs of more than £11bn per year. For common CVDs, most of the direct cost to the NHS is contributed by inpatient admissions.
We aim to refine classification and management, and thus allocation of NHS resources, in patients with acute or chronic cardiovascular disease (CVD), using the experimental medicine infrastructure and groups of patients that have been developed locally by the Oxford BRC and nationally by UK Biobank.
In the therapeutic arena, we will test interventions based on studies that are enhancing our understanding of how CVD develops.
This approach will encompass both common CVDs that are frequently compounded by other conditions the patients has and inherited conditions, where biological mechanisms may be well-defined but genomic data remain insufficient to guide therapeutic classification.
Watch
Hugh Watkins, at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, discussions the way that looking at genes helps with diagnosis and treatment of people with heart conditions. Talk given at the Oxford BRC Open Evening, 12th March 2015.