Monash Life - Victorian Heart Hospital leads approach to cardiovascular health
The Victorian Heart Hospital.
Heart disease is Australia’s biggest killer – of both men and women. Which is why the Victorian Heart Hospital is such a game-changer.
Want to live a long life? Start now. And start with your heart, because heart disease is the country’s biggest killer. But looking after your heart is not just a case of eating well and doing exercise – rather, it’s a complex cocktail of genetics, diet, activity, medicine and socio-economic factors.
But despite all the advances in heart medicine over the past 20 years, there is still so much more we need to know when it comes to our heart health. And that’s why some of Monash’s finest minds are determined to make a difference.
But in the 1980s, scientists found that if you give medication to bust up the clots that block blood vessels and cause heart attacks, patients did much better. Then they discovered that if you lower both blood pressure and cholesterol, you lower the risk of heart attack and stroke.”
These two key pieces of knowledge – discovered through painstaking clinical trials and research – have saved millions of lives. However, Nicholls points out: “Our ability to prevent the disease has improved remarkably and we’ve done a lot better, but heart disease is still Australia’s leading cause of death.”
Professor Stephen Nicholls is the Director of the Monash Victorian Heart Institute and the new Victorian Heart Hospital (VHH), a state-of-the-art hospital and research and teaching centre. The first heart hospital in Australia, it represents a joint partnership between Monash University, the Victorian Government and Monash Health.
Read the full article in Monash life.
About Monash University
Monash University is Australia’s largest university with more than 80,000 students. In the 60 years since its foundation, it has developed a reputation for world-leading high-impact research, quality teaching, and inspiring innovation.
With four campuses in Australia and a presence in Malaysia, China, India, Indonesia and Italy, it is one of the most internationalised Australian universities.
As a leading international medical research university with the largest medical faculty in Australia and integration with leading Australian teaching hospitals, we consistently rank in the top 50 universities worldwide for clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences.
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