European public are unaware of heart failure symptoms

Only 3% of nearly 8000 randomly selected people from nine European countries could identify heart failure from a description of typical symptoms. This is despite 6% of people claiming that someone in their family had had the condition, an international survey of public awareness published in the European Heart Journal online on 31 August has found (http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/, doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehi447).

The lead author, Willem Remme, professor of medicine and director of the Sticares Cardiovascular Research Institute, Rhoon, in the Netherlands, described that the low awareness as “shocking” and “putting lives …