February is Heart Awareness Month

February is Heart Awareness Month, an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of cardiac health and encourage people to adopt healthy lifestyle habits that could help prevent heart disease and stroke, which represent two of the three leading causes of death among Canadians. Additionally, heart disease and stroke costs the Canadian economy more than $20.9 billion every year in physician services, hospital costs, lost wages and decreased productivity, (Conference Board of Canada).

Heart-related statistics from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada:

·        Up to 40,000 cardiac arrests occur each year in Canada. That’s one cardiac arrest every 12 minutes. Without rapid and appropriate treatment, most of these cardiac arrests will result in death. Thousands of lives could be saved through public access to automated external defibrillators.

·        Almost 16,000 Canadians die each year as the result of a heart attack. Most of these deaths occur out of hospital (Statistics Canada, 2012c).

·        Every 7 minutes in Canada, someone dies from heart disease or stroke (Statistics Canada, 2011c).

·        Stroke is the third leading cause of death in Canada. Six percent of all deaths in Canada are due to stroke (Statistics Canada, 2012).

·        Each year, over 14,000 Canadians die from stroke (Statistics Canada, 2012).

·        Each year, more women than men die from stroke (Statistics Canada, 2012).

McGill experts available for interview:

Dr. Nadia Gianetti, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, McGill University, and Chief, Division of Cardiology, McGill University Health Centre
Expertise: Cardiology, heart failure, heart transplants

Contacts: jennifer.marcotte [at] muhc.mcgill.ca

karina.sieres [at] muhc.mcgill.ca (for television filming requests on location at the hospital sites)
Available for interviews in French and English

Dr. Mark Eisenberg, Professor of Medicine, McGill University; Director, McGill MD PhD Program and Staff Cardiologist, Jewish General Hospital

Expertise: Cardiology, angioplasty, smoking cessation, clinical trials, obesity, diets, e cigarettes, heart attacks

Contacts: mark.eisenberg [at] mcgill.ca

thoffman [at] jgh.mcgill.ca (for television filming requests on location at the hospital sites)

Available for interviews in English