Helping People Live as Well as Possible For as Long as Possible...
The Healthy Heart Network is for those who recognise that Heart Attack is one of the single biggest killers today and you want to know how to lower your personal risk of suffering one.
What's My Real Risk of Heart Attack?
Within cardiology terminology, we define the risk of a coronary artery event as “low”, “intermediate” or “high”. A low risk is considered a less than 10 percent chance of a coronary event within 10 years. A high risk is considered a greater than 20 percent chance of an event within 10 years. An intermediate risk is between 10 and 20 percent risk of an event within 10 years.
This means that, if we were to take a group of 100 people who were high-risk and follow them for 10 years, 20 or more of those people would have a coronary event or symptom.
But you still don't know precisely which group you're in!
What is The "Healthy Heart Network"?
The Healthy Heart Network is your safe, non-judgmental online educational mutual-support community. It is a place where you can interact and ask questions to medical professionals and encourage other members on your journey to sustaining a healthy heart.
Led by one of the world’s leading cardiologists, Doctor Warrick Bishop, you will receive expert knowledge to give you the confidence to continue on your journey to improved heart health and reduced risk of a heart attack.
Heart attacks are a silent killer that can often be prevented. In fact, here are some revealing statistics.
Over 9,000,000 People Die Every Year from Heart Disease.
| USA | Australia |
|---|---|
| Over 640,000 Americans die from heart disease every year | Over 18,600 Australians die every year from heart disease |
| That equates to over 1,753 per day | That equates to 51 people a day |
| One person has a heart attack every 40 seconds | One person dies every 28 minutes |
94% of Australians have at least One Risk Factor for heart disease.
59% of Australians have been Touched by heart disease.
Yet only 3% of Australians have had a Full Heart-Health Assessment in the past 12 months.
Dr Warrick Bishop, author of "Know Your Real Risk of Heart Attack” shares a personal story of how current assessment for heart attack risk is not good enough and how we can do better. Cardiac CT imaging can bring precision to prevention and save lives. In this presentation he shares the hurdles to change that are costing lives. He’s on a mission to prevent heart attack - and he needs your help!
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxUniversityofMississippi, an independent event.
About Dr. Warrick Bishop
Every 10 minutes, someone in Australia suffers a heart attack. And 21 lives are lost daily because of it. The devastating fact in all this is…
So many of these cases could have been prevented.
The problem is that most people believe they won't have a heart attack; they think it's a problem that only happens to other folks or certain groups of people. The elderly, people who are overweight, or people who don’t exercise and look after themselves.
The truth is a heart attack can happen to any adult. It can even happen to people who “feel fine.” The key to avoiding heart disease and heart attacks is preventing the ‘too late’ signs. Chest pain, breathlessness, and palpitations.
Curbing these before they happen is the holy grail of preventative cardiology.
It is my goal is to help people prevent heart attacks and the diseases that causes them. Educating and supporting people to understand the importance of heart health. Challenging them to live heart-smart so they can Scale more Summits, Run more Races, and Live for more moments that make their hearts beat.
Hi, I’m Dr Warrick Bishop, and I want you to live as well as possible for as long as possible. I’m a world-renowned practising cardiologist, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and the creator of The Healthy Heart Network. I have over 20 years as a specialist cardiologist, a private practice of over 10,000 patients and have reviewed and reported on approximately 3000 Cardiac CT scans.
I graduated from the University of Tasmania, School of Medicine, in 1988 then completed my advanced training in cardiology in Hobart, Tasmania, becoming a fellow of the Royal Australian College of Physicians
When it comes to the heart, being aware of your blood pressure and keeping it down, being aware of your cholesterol and dealing with it appropriately, undertaking regular exercise, not smoking and addressing other cardiovascular risks are all important for a safe journey through life.
However, on their own, they offer no guarantee of avoiding a heart attack, although they are likely to reduce the risk
A number of years ago something incredible, an amazing coincidence, happened that started Doctor Warrick Bishop on the mission to prevent heart attacks rather than try to cure them
A few years ago, one moment in time changed my entire way of dealing with heart disease. A man had a heart attack and collapsed during a fun run. I helped in his resuscitation only to find out that had seen the very same man two years earlier and reassured him that he was fine. A couple of years earlier I had conducted the usual tests and reassured this man he was in good health and shown no signs of being at risk of suffering a heart attack.
It was obvious to me then; the current methods were outdated and not as accurate as we need them to be.
The experience started me on a journey to inform and help the world prevent heart attacks by using both advocacy and the latest in emerging technologies. This is the key for earlier detection and assessment of those at risk of a heart attack.
My mission is for people to live as well as possible for as long as possible by preventing heart attack.
What is My Real Risk of Heart Attack?
From a practical perspective, the two extremes of low risk and high or very high risk are the easiest to deal with. Low risk requires little more than reassurance, a plan for ongoing lifestyle care and consideration of the role of future reassessment. Similarly, high- or very high-risk features dictate that therapy should be undertaken. The grey area lies in intermediate risk. This is where an understanding is needed, not only of the limitation of the data that is available to guide us.
257 Commercial Airline fatalities occurred in 2019.
1 fatal accident involving large commercial passenger planes for every 5.58 million flights.
We are happy to refer to low risk as up to a 10 percent chance within 10 years and not consider treatment, even though this could be expressed as a one percent chance per annum of having a major event. How would you react if, the next time you booked a commercial airline flight, you were told there was a one percent per annum chance of being involved in a crash, or a 10 percent chance of being involved in a crash over your next 10 years of flying?
Over 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year—that’s 1 in every 4 deaths.
Someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds.
“OK guys, I’ve spoken to the doc and he says 10 to 15 of you will have a heart attack in the next 10 years. Could I just ask that it’s not all the tenors?”
Within cardiology terminology, we define the risk of a coronary artery event as “low”, “intermediate” or “high”. A low risk is considered a less than 10 percent chance of a coronary event within 10 years. A high risk is considered a greater than 20 percent chance of an event within 10 years. An intermediate risk is between 10 and 20 percent risk of an event within 10 years.
This means that, if we were to take a group of 100 people who were highrisk and follow them for 10 years, 20 or more of those people would have a coronary event or symptom. If we introduced aspirin and a cholesterol lowering tablet to reduce the risk of an event in this group of 100 then, statistically, we would be treating up to 80 people who were not going to have an event and perhaps did not need treatment. This has a significant impact on the way the effectiveness of that intervention is assessed.
The statistical significance of assessing the effectiveness of primary prevention in this group is diluted by the people within the population who were not destined to have an event. Similarly, if we were to take a group of 100 people with low risk of an event and follow them for 10 years, up to 10 of those individuals could have a coronary event and 90 would remain without any symptom or sign. Here again, the problem is: How do we appropriately treat the 10 but not over-treat the 90?
Screening using stress tests
Stress testing as an indicator of coronary artery disease have some significant limitations. The exercise stress test, usually undertaken on a treadmill or a stationary exercise bike, is used to determine how blood is flowing through the arteries. Health insurance companies and other agencies and organisations still use stress testing as an indicator of coronary artery disease.
Until recently, this was a fair and reasonable thing to do, as it was, in fact, the only way we could try to unmask a problem within the arteries in a non-invasive and objective fashion. Available data suggest that if a patient performs well on a treadmill test without evidence of any problems, then his/her one year mortality, or risk of a major problem, is low10. Remember it was ‘low’ for the fun runner.
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