Health service staff should start checking people’s blood pressure at gyms, barber shops and football stadiums in a bid to cut deaths from heart attacks and strokes, NHS bosses are being urged.
Nurses should also offer health checks in workplaces and at train stations to help identify the millions of people in England with undiagnosed high blood pressure, the British Heart Foundation says. The condition is the commonest cause of heart attacks and strokes, which together remain the biggest source of premature deaths, despite success in recent years in reducing them.
Britain’s leading cardiac health charity wants NHS England chiefs to end the service’s reliance on blood pressure checks being done in traditional settings such as GP surgeries and hospitals.
Its new report says the forthcoming NHS long-term plan, due at the start of December, must include such innovative moves to help people understand the risks they face of heart attack, stroke or vascular dementia. Thousands of extra lives a year could be saved through “a relentless determination to detect and treat these risk factors as early as possible”.
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