Portsmouth hospital signs up for British Heart Foundation-funded research

Funded by the British Heart Foundation, the £1.3m project will look at whether the technique of inflating and deflating a blood pressure cuff on a patient’s arm during a heart attack can help reduce the damage and boost recovery.

Between 30 and 40 people every month are taken to QA after suffering a heart attack.

Run by the Clinical Trials Unit at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the project is led by professors Derek Hausenloy, Derek Yellon and Rajesh Kharbanda.

QA is one of 20 hospitals to help in the project and 100 patients at the Cosham hospital have signed up for it.

Ali Dana, consultant cardiologist and principal investigator for the trial at QA, said: ‘This is an exciting and high profile study for us to be a part of.

‘We were invited to join the study by the lead investigator at University College London.

‘This is an area of research that I was interested in from when I was doing my PhD,

‘Now is the time to see whether it really works for patients or not – and if it does, our patients may potentially see significant benefits from this simple intervention.’