Healing broken hearts: A midsummer night’s tale

Professor Iain Squire

Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine

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Lecture summary

Diseases of the heart, in particular ischaemic heart disease, remain the biggest single cause of mortality in industrialised societies. One of the most important, adverse prognostic consequences of ischaemic heart disease is heart failure, the loss of adequate pump function. Until 10 or so years ago, heart failure was the 'Cinderella' branch of cardiology. This has changed dramatically, and the condition of heart failure has been studied extensively, and treatment has developed from very simple to highly complex.

This lecture will describe my personal part in the research in to the diagnosis and management of ischaemic heart disease and heart failure. The lecture will begin with my very early studies in to the blood pressure response to the first dose of angiotensin converting enzyme treatment, a scenario which  in the early 1990s filled many physicians with dread! We will then discuss developments in the pharmacological management of heart failure and the place in the diagnosis and prognostication of heart failure of the natriuretic peptides and other biomarkers. The lecture will then consider aspects of the epidemiology of ischaemic heart disease and heart failure as are seen in Leicestershire, with particular discussion of these conditions in populations of white European and South Asian ethnic origin. We will also consider the role and relative importance to prognosis of the diagnosis of diabetes and of blood glucose concentration in patients hospitalised with a heart attack or with heart failure.