Data show that, across Europe, cardiovascular diseases are the cause of the largest number of preventable premature deaths. These figures support the need for better detection and management of cardiovascular disease.
Currently, the detection of cardiovascular disease is based on the individual’s response to symptoms, which means that they are often diagnosed at advanced stages.
This can lead to asymptomatic individuals not receiving timely preventive measures to reduce the risk of new cardiovascular disease, even if they have conditions such as structural heart disease, abdominal aortic aneurysms, peripheral arterial disease, carotid plaques, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or arrhythmias, as these conditions often do not present symptoms.
Unlike oncology, where many European countries have screening programs for some types of cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and their uncontrolled risk factors are usually discovered through voluntary check-ups, as secondary findings, or after serious cardiovascular events.
Health screenings are a key public health strategy that seeks to detect diseases or health problems in their early stages, even before symptoms appear. Through different tests that depend on the condition to be identified, people who are in the early stages of a disease, or even in advanced ones in some cases, can be diagnosed.
Screenings are applied to specific population groups, determined according to the population group typically affected by the disease to be detected.
Among the benefits they provide, the following can be highlighted:
- Early detection. They help to reduce the impact of chronic or serious diseases, such as cancer or cardiovascular diseases, allowing them to be treated when they are still controlled.
- Optimization of the healthcare system. Early detection of diseases reduces the costs associated with advanced treatments and prolonged hospitalization.
- Improving quality of life. People detected early can avoid serious complications and maintain an active and healthy life.
- Adaptation to demographic changes. With an increasingly aging population, screening is essential to manage chronic diseases efficiently and sustainably.
In short, screening programs have proven to be an important public health tool and, for that reason, are becoming increasingly common. In this context, a new cardiovascular risk screening of the community of Madrid has been announced.
In 2015, it was estimated that the cost of CVD amounted to approximately 210 billion euros in Europe, of which about half are direct costs and the rest to informal care and loss of productivity (2) informal care and lost productivity (3).
In this context, and to solve some of these problems, the Community of Madrid has announced a new screening program through which a total of half a million people will be tested.
The participants will be called to their health center of reference or to the center closest to their home that participates in the project. Nursing professionals will be in charge of scheduling and performing the tests.
The data to be collected will be:
- Lifestyle and family disease,
- HbA1C to identify diabetes,
- lipid profile to measure cholesterol (through a rapid test)
- blood pressure,
- weight and height.
Depending on the results, the patient will be referred or not to the PC professional.
However, in this screening exercise auscultation or murmur tests will not be included among the screening tests to be performed. A simple auscultation or verification of such a test would be key to detecting heart valve disease and other diseases, taking another step towards improving the health of the population and the cost-efficiency of the system. The SHD Coalition published a consensus document with Spanish stakeholders, clinical leaders, and other representatives reviewing the need for early detection of heart valve disease in the country, which you can check here: Llamamiento a la Acción –
Regional authorities in Madrid should consider the value of auscultation to detect heart murmurs as the first step in the early detection of all cardiovascular diseases and use this opportunity to improve the cardiovascular health of the ageing population in the region. By doing this, Madrid will become a pioneer in systematic heart checks in all of Europe.