P-05-870 Let’s Get Every Young Heart Screened (Age 10-35), Correspondence – Petitioner to Committee, 09.10.19

To whom it may concern,

1) Welsh Hearts recognises that population screening for cardiac disease might be seen as controversial as evidenced by the fact that it is not already currently routinely taking place elsewhere.

2) There is a suggestion from the Wales Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy genetic testing service that the genetic prevalence of susceptible genes in Wales is different from the data in published the literature. This suggests the possibility that published international screening studies may not always be applicable to the Wales population, and the negative cost/benefit conclusions from some studies may not be relied upon.

3) The screening events that Welsh Hearts has already untaken has found a higher incidence of both life-limiting and life-affecting cardiac conditions than that published in the literature.

4) There is therefore an opportunity for Welsh Government to support Welsh Hearts to obtain valuable screening data on a smaller scale to more fully inform decisions about wider population screening in the Welsh population.

Justin Taylor

Cardiologist and Medical Lead for Welsh Hearts

We still remain very committed to screening  and when we can offer as many heart screenings as possible for free we will continue to do so but as a small charity we can’t keep offering these for free without large donations. We have set up The Ben McDonald Heart Screening Fund for Wales so any donations will go towards free screening sessions.

In view of what happened at this year’s Cardiff Half Marathon more needs to be done to screen these young athletes!

Sharon Owen