NEWS STORIES

We are delighted to announce that we have a new member of the PCCS Council: Dr Paul Ferenc GP and GPSI in Cardiology. Graduated from Birmingham and completed foundation years in the North West, where he undertook a cardiology house job until moving to Worcestershire to undertake GP training. Since 2015 Dr Ferenc has been working at the local hospital as a GPwSI in cardiology with the local cardiology team.

The PCCS 2nd Annual Conference ‘Cardiovascular Guidelines into Practice’ took place on Thursday 16th May at the Hallam Conference Centre in Central London. A 70 strong multidisciplinary attendance of GPs, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals involved in cardiovascular disease care from across the UK were treated to a day of high quality and entertaining education.

The meeting was opened by our President Professor Ahmet Fuat who outlined the program, reiterated the aims of the PCCS and informed us of PCCS Board changes to take place formally at our AGM at the PCCJ meeting in Nottingham in November. Professor Ahmet Fuat, Dr Kathryn Griffith (Secretary) and Professor Michael Norton (Treasurer) will stand down to allow President-Elect Dr Jim Moore, Secretary-Elect Helen Williams and Treasurer-Elect Dr Richard Blakey to take over. Professor Fuat with stay on as immediate Past President, Professor Norton as an observer member
with a remit in Resuscitation Medicine and Dr Griffith will stand down completely. Two new board members will be elected and announced soon. Prof Fuat extended a deep debt of gratitude to both colleagues and in particular Kathryn who has put so much into the Society over many years. Thank you Kathryn.

The meeting was opened by Dr Matt Kearney NHSE National Clinical Director for CVD Prevention. His main message was that primary care needs to work differently using pharmacists, nurses and others to increase detection and management of hypertension, atrial fibrillation, lipids, familial hypercholesterolaemia and heart failure. This he said was imperative to address the recent National picture of a slowing down of CVD mortality and morbidity and close the detection and treatment gap in the priority areas outlined above. He felt the PCCS were central to CVD Leadership and implementation
of the proposed CVD Prevention Program and emerging Primary Care Networks
(PCNs) which will be expected to deliver to drive up CVD care standards.

There followed six sessions addressing diagnosis and management of patients presenting with common primary care symptoms and signs including palpitations, breathlessness, raised blood pressure, coronary artery disease with residual CV risk, diabetic patient with high CVD risk and a patient with a raised cholesterol. Real life case studies were outlined by session chairs, followed by presentations on diagnostic work up, guidelines and practical examples from around the country of how guidelines had been put into practice. All sessions were expertly presented and generated considerable
debate amongst our lively and interactive audience.

We would like to thank all of the speakers that contributed to the day and in particular the following:

Primary Care Cardiovascular Journal
British Society for Heart Failure
The British and Irish Hypertension Society
The British Cardiac Society
The Primary Care Diabetes Society
British Heart Foundation
AHSN North East

Finally we wouldn’t have been able to run such a fantastic day if it hadn’t been for our industry sponsors

Bayer
Novartis
Amgen
Medtronic
Sanofi

Please watch this space for further opportunities to download the slides.