Evidence in Practice

Stories in this Evidence in Practice include:

• Health survey for England, 2016: The good and the bad news
• Healthy lifestyle changes have a long-term benefit for type 2 diabetes prevention
• Weight loss diets reduce the risk of premature death for people with obesity
• Very low calorie diet can achieve a remission of Type 2 Diabetes
• Dash diet plus sodium reduction lowers systolic blood pressure
• Long-term follow-up underscores benefits of lowering LDL-C in CVD primary prevention
• Blood pressure self-monitoring is more effective with professional support
• AF and other chronic conditions = higher risk of death
• Clinical trials underestimate the real-world impact of Atherosclerotic CVD
• The burden of heart failure continues to rise in the UK

An 18-year UK study in more than 24,000 subjects shows the benefits of exercise in elderly patients. The EPIC Norfolk prospective population study showed that any physical activity in the elderly is better than none at all for reducing cardiovascular risk.

Between 2002 and 2014, the number of new cases of heart failure in the UK increased by 12% – from 170,727 to 190,798 cases, according to the most comprehensive review of heart failure statistics in the UK. The number of new heart failure cases in 2014 was similar to the combined number of new cases of breast, prostate, lung and bowel cancer (189,136 cases in 2014).

Misdiagnosis of diabetes subtypes is putting the health of people at risk to a new UK study. Researchers examined the primary care records of more than 2 million people, assessing the frequency of different types of diabetes and the accuracy of diagnosis. Particular focus was given to those who developed Type 3c diabetes.

Worldwide, there has been a more than ten-fold increase in the number of children and adolescents with obesity in the past four decades, increasing from 5 million girls in 1975 to 50 million in 2016, and from 6 million to 74 million boys, according to a new global analysis of trends in child and adolescent obesity in 200 countries.

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is not significantly better than a placebo procedure in improving exercise capacity or symptoms even in patients with severe coronary stenosis, according to new UK research. The ORBITA study is the first double blind randomised controlled trial to directly compare stenting with placebo in patients with stable angina who are receiving high quality drug treatment.

A study suggests that high-risk patients are being under-prescribed statins whereas patients in low-risk categories are being overtreated. Researchers have shown that statins are usually prescribed without recording of the QRISK2 cardiovascular risk assessment score recommended by NICE. Even when a score is documented, the majority of high-risk patients do not receive statins

New research presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in September has shown for the first time that e-cigarettes with nicotine cause a stiffening of the arteries which is associated with an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes in later life.