those at risk of less severe heart attacks should receive early heart X-rays - social background to be figured into risk assessment.

Experts' plan to cut heart deaths

Experts believe thousands of lives could be saved

A radical new approach to preventing heart disease could save more than 7,000 lives over the next five years, according to health professionals.

Experts are recommending a new approach which they say could also prevent 27,000 heart attacks and other "cardiac events" in Scotland.

About 500,000 more people could be in line to receive preventative treatment.

The plans, which recommend regular risk assessments for all over-40s, aim to target those most at risk.

They have been produced by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (Sign), which draws up guidelines for the NHS.

It recommends that more people should be given statin drugs to reduce cholesterol.

Lifestyle advice

The guidelines also recommend that, for the first time, doctors take into account social status when deciding whether people need treatment to prevent heart disease.

This could be based on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, which has been created by the Scottish Executive to identify areas of deprivation across Scotland.

It is expected that 50% of men in Scotland and 20% of women over the age of 40 could be prescribed cholesterol-lowering statins.

The guidelines would see the over-40s undergo a risk assessment every five years, at which they would also receive lifestyle advice.

The health professionals say that those at risk of less severe heart attacks should receive early heart X-rays and be assessed for possible surgery.

These guidelines could save lives, and improve the quality of life of people living with heart disease Marjory Burns British Heart Foundation Scotland

Patients with the most serious type of heart attack should be admitted to regional centres to have the blood clots and narrowed arteries removed and replaced with a device to keep the arteries open.

If this is not possible within 90 minutes of diagnosis, they should rapidly receive the most effective clot-busting drugs.

More patients with heart problems should be given implantable defibrillators to reduce the risk of sudden death and discharge arrangements for hospital patients with heart failure should be improved.

Professor Keith Fox of Sign said: "These guidelines bring together the most robust and up-to-date scientific evidence and the very best clinical expertise to detail how we can save thousands of people from developing and suffering the complications of heart disease.

"The result will be thousands of deaths avoided and tens of thousands of people whose lives will not be blighted by heart attacks, angina, heart failure, heart rhythm disorders and other complications that impair quality of life."

More people will be screened for heart problems

He said family history and social background could also be figured into risk assessment.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) claimed more than 10,000 lives in Scotland last year.

However, deaths have fallen by 30% over the last 10 years - partly because of previous Sign guidelines, according to the experts.

Marjory Burns, director of the British Heart Foundation Scotland, welcomed the new "milestone".

"These guidelines could save lives and improve the quality of life of people living with heart disease, but they will only do so if they are adequately resourced and implemented," she said.

"We would also therefore call on the Scottish Executive to ensure that the political will and the resources are found to implement them fully."

INTERACTIVE DEPRIVATION MAP Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation Many computers will open this web page automatically, but you may need Adobe SVG Viewer Download the viewer here

The chief executive of Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland, David Clark, welcomed the new guidelines and reiterated the need for adequate funding.

He added: "We also need to keep up the message that the best ways to keep your heart healthy are to stop smoking, watch your diet and take more exercise."

It is estimated almost that 200 extra staff would be needed in the first five years of implementing the guidelines, with the total cost of putting the recommendations into practice estimated at £44m in the first year, rising to £78m in the sixth year.

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said the guidelines set out a long-term vision for preventing and treating coronary heart disease.

"The recommendations in the guidelines about prevention sit well with our anticipatory care programme, Keep Well, which is about increasing the rate of health improvement in the most deprived communities," he added.

reposted from: BBC
my highlights / emphasis / edits

Seduced by Science - why science writers write about science

Sue Blackmore

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Seduced by science

Norman Mailer has said that writing a novel is like falling in love - and it's the same for us writers of non-fiction too.

February 7, 2007 10:30 AM

Norman Mailer has released his first new novel in 10 years and he's been talking about writing. In an outrageous snub to us science writers he declared that writing a novel is like falling in love, but writing non-fiction isn't. You don't choose to write a novel; it just happens to you and you've no choice but to follow through. But writing non-fiction, he said, is straightforward. It's just a matter of gathering the material, deciding how long the book is going to be and who is going to publish it - easy!

I suppose he cannot imagine what it's like to write science, but I know. It is like falling love. You catch a glimpse, you become intrigued by some mystery, you take another look and before you know it you are in too deep to stop.

Some of my books were inspired by strange states of consciousness, and some by a long obsession with the mysteries of the mind. The Meme Machine forced itself on me during a long illness. As I lay in bed, hour after hour, month after month, ideas from Dawkins and Dennett tumbled in my head, mixed themselves up, straightened themselves out, and produced numerous moments of "aha ... " "what if ... " and "but ... " When I finally got well again the ideas forced me to write them down.

But what of other science writers? I decided to ask them and was rewarded with some wonderful comparisons - bringing up a child, finding money in the street, thinking, and - yes - falling in love.

Steven Pinker gets "seduced into science writing for many reasons, not all of them rational. I've written long stretches out of some internal compulsion to understand something for myself, or out of some sense of completeness or responsibility, or just out of some inexplicable obsession! Very much like love, yes."

Some find writing agonising (but can't love be like that too?). For Nicholas Humphrey it is "really difficult. More like bringing up a child!" For Martin Rees, "writing is always a pain" and Adam Hart-Davis described it as "a sequence of compulsions; I want to write; I want to tell the world; I manically research and tap away on trains and planes and even in the back of taxis; and I love it when I have finished." For Guy Claxton, writing is thinking. "I don't think out what I am going to say, and then put it down. I am continually surprised, sometimes delighted and occasionally appalled by what my fingers come up with."

The passion of these science writers was obvious. Matt Ridley, author of Genome, talked about "the first creature to read its own recipe in 4 billion years - why would I ever want to write about anything else?" and delights that "the giddy thrill of sharing a new truth till now unknown to the world is one that only science writers know."

Dan Wegner finds writing "like finding money in the street. You're just walking along and you look down and there's something shiny, and then something else, and then more over there!" And Simon Singh only writes about stories he's genuinely passionate about. "So when I suddenly come across a science story that captures my imagination it is a bit like falling in love. Even though I knew that a subject like cryptography would be fascinating, it was only with time that I really appreciated all the heroes and villains, and all the intricate details that adorn the world of codes and codebreaking."

Toughest on Mailer was Steve Jones, who said that "like all other novelists, he is a mere observer, retailing sex, drugs and rock and roll at second hand, however amorously he does the job. Scientists make science, while historians do not make history and biographers tend not to have much of a life."
It was Carl Sagan who wrote: "Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world." Richard Dawkins reminded me of this, and told me: "I couldn't put it better myself if I tried, so I won't. But I was delighted when a reviewer described Unweaving the Rainbow as a love letter to science."

So, Mr Mailer, you novelists can't have it all to yourself. We science writers can fall in love too.

reposted from: Guardian
my highlights / emphasis / edits