August – Welcome from the Medical and Research Director 

Prof. J. William McEvoy

NIPC Medical and Research Director, Chair of Executive Council

Dear Alliance Members, welcome to the August 2023 NIPC e-Bulletin. I hope you are looking forward to the new school / academic year ahead and I would encourage you to consider the many educational offerings NIPC have to offer over the coming months.

I am delighted to announce that Dr Susan Connolly will once again be leading the course An Integrated Approach to Cardiometabolic Chronic Disease, Wednesday18th October, 6:00pm – 8:00pm. This is a fantastic course that aims to further participants’ understanding of how to provide an integrated approach to managing patients with cardiometabolic based chronic disease.

As you know, the West of Ireland Integrated Diabetes Care Conference is fast approaching, Saturday October 14th, 9.00am – 1.30pm at the Sligo Park Hotel, Sligo and the Abstract submission deadline has now been extended until the 8th of September. If you are completing a thesis or research project or study in the field of diabetes care, I would encourage you to submit your abstracts and showcase your work to your peers and colleagues.

Registration is now open for the next NIPC Series webinar, Heart Failure Matters, Tuesday 26th September, 7:00pm – 8:00pm. This free webinar comprises of an expert panel and will discuss important updates on the National Programme for Heart Failure in Ireland, more details below.

Importantly, please keep in mind also and mark your calendar our 10th annual National Prevention Conference at the Sheraton Athlone Hotel, Athlone on Friday November 24, 2023.

On the research front, I had the privilege to present the principle results of the INTERASPIRE study at the recent ESC Congress 2023 in Amsterdam this past weekend. We enrolled 4548 participants from 14 countries across all 6 WHO regions who had an admission for coronary heart disease a median of 1 year prior to the study interview and exam. Despite being a year removed from their hospitalization, we found remarkably poor attainment of secondary prevention risk factor and lifestyle targets across all regions of the world. Selected results include the following; 67% did not reach physical activity targets, 41% were centrally obese, 32% had BP >=140/90 mmHg, 59% had LDL cholesterol >=1.8 mmol/L, and 67% were dysglycaemic. Remarkably, only 27% of this international cohort were referred for cardiac rehab and only 9% attended.

These sobering results will be published soon and remind us of the huge challenges (and opportunities) in implementing CVD prevention recommendations around the world. I am very grateful to the entire NIPC team for helping us lead this major international study.

Many Thanks

Bill