The heart failure team at the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust - which runs Hinchingbrooke and Peterborough City hospitals - is helping to lead the way in a national drive to detect heart failure sooner and reduce deaths as a result.

The team has taken its awareness roadshow to the Trust’s main hospital sites to talk to patients, visitors and healthcare staff about how to spot signs that their heart is not working as well as it should, so they can get medical support as soon as possible.

NWAFT one of seven pilot sites across the UK to be taking part in a British Society for Heart Failure community programme to raise awareness of the subtle early signs of heart failure and educate people on how they can take control of their health to reduce the progression of symptoms.

Working with colleagues across the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Integrated Care System, the team successfully bid to be part of the pilot scheme ahead of it being rolled out across the UK in 2025.

Kathy Simmonds, lead heart failure nurse, said: “Our aim is to improve the health of the local population by picking up signs of undetected heart failure and then offering treatment and support before people become acutely unwell.

"This supports the British Society for Heart Failure’s goal of reducing deaths from heart failure by 25 per cent in the next 25 years.

“Many people are unaware of what heart failure really means. It sounds quite frightening, but the early signs are things we can treat and manage well. This is a really important campaign that would save 10,000 lives each year across the UK.

“We are really proud to have been chosen to be part of this pilot ahead and it has been great to talk to so many interested people across our hospitals."