Doc: Don’t overlook symptoms amid high repeat-attack, death rates

One in six of the 556 heart attacks recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2022 was not the patient’s first, figures presented by the Heart and Stroke Foundation have revealed. One in three patients did not leave the hospital alive.

Fitness trainer and general practitioner Dr Vicky Estwick gave the figures in a keynote speech at the foundation’s Annual World Heart Day luncheon at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, held under this year’s theme, Using heart for action.

“The numbers are not pretty,” Dr Estwick said. “This is our own data from 2022. There were 556 heart attacks recorded at the hospital in 2022. Out of those 556, 14 per cent, so about one in six persons, it was not their first time having a heart attack. One out of every three did not leave QEH alive, and that is why the Heart and Stroke Foundation exists.”