Regional Heart Failure Program hosts annual clinic

The VCH/PHC Regional Heart Failure Strategy hosted its sixth free blood pressure clinic on February 17 at UBC’s Health and Safety Day.

For the past three year the VCH/PHC Regional Heart Failure Strategy has partnered with the Heart and Stroke Foundation to host Heart Failure Awareness Day in February to raise awareness about the risks Cefadroxil of high blood pressure and its link to heart disease. The Day’s clinic provides a multi-disciplinary team of nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and dieticians from SPH and VGH Heart Function Clinics to offer free blood pressure checks, cardiac risk factor assessments and lifestyle counseling. The Foundation devoted its 2016 annual report to the growing heart failure epidemic within Canada. It reported that over 600,000 people live with heart failure, that 50,000 new heart failure diagnoses are made each year and that one in two people is affected by someone with heart failure. High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart failure. Heart failure is hard to diagnose and, for many people living with high blood pressure, the disease progresses undetected.

Many participants who had their blood pressure taken did not know their blood pressure reading. Data drawn from the previous Heart Failure Awareness Days has shown that 25 per cent of the participants with high blood pressure did not know they had an elevated BP. Screening clinics such as this one, with a multi-disciplinary team, is an important first step in helping create awareness about blood pressure and its link to heart disease.