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I am indebted to Dr. H. D. Tunstall Pedoe, Project Senior Registrar, for the
following report on the Tower Hamlets Coronary Project:
"From an office in Stepney, information on residents of Tower Hamlets
who have heart attacks is being collected for analysis by the World Health
Organisation. The results are to be compared with those from 15 other European
cities. Tower Hamlets Coronary Project is run jointly by the Medical Research
Council Social Medicine Unit and the London Hospital Cardiac Department, and it
is funded by the Department of Health. The office is situated in Walden street,
close to the Tower Hamlets Health Department offices. The staff of the Health
Department have given invaluable help at all stages of the Survey.
The object of the study is to register all residents of the borough below
the age of 65, who have coronary heart attacks, and to find out what happens to
them. Unlike infectious diseases, coronary thrombosis isnot a notifiab1e disease
and a system has been developed for searching for cases in hospital and at
home, that keeps the number lost to a minimum. The information is collected in
confidence and virtually everyone approached has agreed to help, including
many of the relatives of those who have died suddenly, who canoften give personal
information that is otherwise unobtainable.
In the first year of the study (to March 1971) 393 cases were registered
including 132 deaths. Results of the analysis showed that the majority of
deaths, two-thirds of them, occurred outside hospital and that about half
occurred within an hour of the start of the attack- Half of all the victims died
without seeing a doctor in the previous 14 days and half of the deaths outside
hospital were not witnessed. However, most of the victims were known to have some
heart trouble before they died and many of them had had previous heart attacks.
2 out of 3 of al 1 patients who had heart attacks survived and of the ones who were
treated in hospital, the vast majority survived and returned to their previous
work.
The above results reinforce similar information that has been or is being
obtained from other areas. One of the interests of The Tower Hamlets study is the
use that is made by the population of the hospitals and General Practitioners.
During 1971, preliminary results show that approximately a third of patients
with heart attacks went to the nearest hospital without seeing a doctor first,
another third were seen at home, either by their own doctor or by "the emergency
doctor" and that many of the remainder we refirst seen in a General Practitioner's
surgery. These findings are being analysed in greater detail and in addition a
special study is underway on the effects of the heart attack on the family life
and work of the sufferer."
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