Heartbeat: Raising our game with cardiovascular disease research

October 21, 2022

Sandwell and West Birmingham has one of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease in England. In order to raise awareness we highlighted how the Trust is working to improve the statistics.

Heartbeat caught up with senior research nurses Sibet Joseph and Paddy Donaghy along with Professor Derek Connolly, our director of research and development, who is also a consultant cardiologist.

Prior to starting in his research role, Paddy spent six years on our coronary care unit treating patients with heart attacks. “There is no doubt that many heart attacks are preventable,” said Paddy. “We are making big strides in getting people to stop smoking and that has had the biggest effect in reducing heart disease over the last 20 years.”

Sibet has undertaken many heart studies with Professor Connolly and they have looked especially at cholesterol, developing many new therapies to lower cholesterol levels that are now used in clinical practice. “There have been great strides in the research of cholesterol,” said Sibet. “But we need to keep going and we are about to start several more studies looking at new targets such as Lipoprotein (a) which runs in families and is particularly prominent in several of our wonderful ethnic communities.”

Professor Connolly said our Trust research department has been part of delivering several major studies which have developed new therapies to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

He stated: “Heart attacks and strokes can devastate lives and we know that they are the biggest cause of death in our area. One of the key things that is important is that many studies are undertaken on caucasian populations, and it is imperative that we make all research available to our minority ethnic communities. This will ensure that the therapies work just as well in those groupings.

“We have shown during the pandemic that the Trust can be a real world leader in research but it is now time to get back to our fundamental diseases such as heart disease so we can find new treatments and cures for patients going forward.”

SWB has been very fortunate to receive a donation of nearly £200,000 towards cardiovascular disease research from a grateful patient of Professor Connolly which will help us with our studies. Along with our new Head of Research, Kelly Hard, the whole of the research team are keen to put our patients and population at the heart of our research.