News and views

The recent British Society for Heart Failure (BSH) 27th hybrid annual meeting highlighted the importance of building partnerships with collaborating societies and how this is vital to prioritising patient care and advancing the goal of 25in25, the BSH campaign to reduce heart failure mortality by 25% over the next 25 years. Held in London on 21st – 22nd November 2024, the meeting brought together over 700 members of heart failure teams from all nations to listen and learn from esteemed experts. Anna Briggs, Louise Collier, Edith Donnelly, Becky Hyland, Hayley Rose, and Teresa O’Nwere-Tan from the BSH Nurse Forum Author Board report the meeting highlights....

We are pleased to announce that the BJC is in partnership with Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), we have a new forthcoming series on sports cardiology, and a statement from The British Heart Valve Society....

Dear Sirs, We read with interest the cross-sectional study by Kazemi et al. exploring the cardiovascular phenotypes of 690 hospitalised COVID-19 patients in a tertiary centre in Iran. The authors found the prevalence of new-onset hypertension (as defined by a systolic blood pressure [BP] ≥130 mmHg and/or diastolic BP ≥80 mmHg) was 10%.1 Longer-term follow up of these patients and documentation of electrolyte dysfunction are lacking and, with due respect, are limitations of their work....

We report from the 19th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiorenal Forum held in London on 4th October 2024, which served as a dynamic platform for experts in cardiology, diabetes, and renal medicine to converge and exchange the latest insights on managing heart and kidney failure. The meeting centred on the intricate relationship between cardiac and renal health, with sessions aimed at bridging gaps between specialties to improve patient outcomes in cardiorenal syndromes. Drs Kaushika Rautray and Sarah Birkhoelzer share some of the meeting highlights....

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Paul Foley (Consultant Cardiologist, Great Western Hospitals, Swindon), as an Editor of The British Journal of Cardiology (BJC), effective from January 2025. Paul joins Dr Henry Purcell and Professor Terry McCormack, who continue to make invaluable contributions to the journal....

HEART UK held its 37th Annual Medical and Scientific Conference between 10th–12th July. This year, the cholesterol charity took on an international theme, looking at the global cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention picture. There was also a particular focus on women and CVD disease, alongside a review of how familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) care has advanced in recent decades....

The British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) annual conference returned to the Manchester Central Convention Complex on the 3–5 June 2024. This year’s focus was our most important stakeholder, the patient – highlighting how research, pharmaceutical and technological advancements are improving patient outcomes, and the importance of value-based care....

Dear Sirs, In the recent article ‘Drug therapies for stroke prevention’, under the heading entitled ‘Control of blood pressure’, the authors specified that “A systolic blood pressure (SBP) target of 120–129 mmHg should be routinely aimed for in those <65 years old….”.1 This ‘goal’ SBP does not take recognition of the fact that the goal SBP that optimally mitigates the risk of incident atrial fibrillation (AF) and, hence, cardioembolic stroke, is a SBP <120 mmHg.2...

Dear Sirs, Sodium-glucose cotransporter type 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors (dapagliflozin, empagliflozin, canagliflozin) are increasingly being prescribed in the primary-care setting for cardiovascular indications. SGLT2 inhibitors have been found to reduce the risk of all-cause mortality, heart failure (HF) hospitalisations and cardiovascular death in a wide range of HF patients.1...

Dear Sirs, Given the fact that we are now practising medicine in an era where the standard of care is the optimisation of evidence-based treatments – both for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and for heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) – it is imperative that strategies should also be optimised both for identification of congestive heart failure (CHF) and for establishing a distinction between HFrEF and HFpEF. The requirement to distinguish between HFrEF and HFpEF is partly met by the use of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) for measuring left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), but this only serves to allocate the patient either to a category of an LVEF <50% or ≥50%. What TTE fails to do is to validate or refute the diagnosis of CHF in patients in either of these LVEF categories....