Britain needs 'hundreds more' heart specialists

Britain has one of the world's highest death rates from heart disease but patients cannot get treatment because of a critical shortage of specialists, a report said yesterday.

Coronary heart disease caused 125,000 deaths in the UK in 2000, one in four of all deaths among men and one in six among women, the worst record of any developed countries except Finland and Ireland. Patients in Britain get sub-standard treatment until after they have had a heart attack, when the care is good, the report by the Royal College of Physicians and the British Cardiac Society says.

Professor John Camm, president of the British Cardiac Society, said there were 630 cardiologists in Britain compared with 24,000 in the United States which has only four times the population.

The report says advances have been made but care is patchy and patients face a lottery over whether they get access to the best treatments. It calls for an extra 900 consultant cardiologists by 2010 and new efforts to train staff in different roles as surgeon and physician assistants. Professor Camm said: "Without basic manpower the service simply cannot be provided to the standard that it ought."