Patients miss out on heart implants

Health experts have also noted “appalling” regional differences in the treatment of UK patients with heart rhythm disorders who are at risk of sudden cardiac death.

The announcement from heart rhythm charity Arrhythmia Alliance comes as clinical experts publish a major new report into cardiac care highlighting the issue.

Around 100,000 people in the UK die every year after suffering sudden cardiac arrest, which results from a heart rhythm disorder.

Many would have been saved by a simple implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), which automatically restarts the heart in the event of a cardiac arrest.

ICD therapy is available on the NHS and has been approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence as the first-line treatment in many patients.

But despite the treatment’s cost effectiveness, the UK lags far behind other European countries in its use.

Latest figures show that German patients are almost three times more likely to receive the life-saving treatment they need than NHS patients.

The UK implants 70 life-saving devices per million people compared with Germany’s 200 per million and overall the UK is third from the bottom in a table of western European ICD use.

There is also a wide variation in ICD use across the UK, with patients in north London more than twice as likely to receive an implant than those in Lancashire and Cumbria, which the charity said did not reflect differences in numbers of people with heart rhythm disorders in different regions but demonstrates a failure to address patient needs.

The Arrhythmia Alliance is today launching its Whole Hearted campaign to increase the number of implants carried out and call for a greater understanding of why local variation in implant rates is occurring.

Its chief executive, Trudie Lobban, said: “This report clearly illustrates that NHS provision of cardiac implantable devices is failing to meet the needs of the population at risk, and that chances of getting a life-saving treatment are more dependent upon where you live than on clinical need.

“Despite the advances made in recent years in tackling vascular heart attacks, problems with the electrical wiring of the heart have not received the same attention.

“The result is that we are only treating half of the heart’s problems, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe, allowing patients to die needlessly.

“We have the technology to ensure tens of thousands of people can live. We just have to use it.”

Richard Schilling, professor of cardiology and electrophysiology at St Bart’s Hospital, London, said: “The evidence clearly demonstrates that ICDs are lifesavers.

“Other countries are taking a lead on this and the UK has fallen behind. We urgently need to review how these services are delivered by the NHS so that we can prevent thousands of avoidable deaths.”