A DUNDEE mother is raising awareness of cardiac screening after both herself and her son were diagnosed with potentially deadly heart defects.
Fiona Brown, 42, and her 15-year-old son Ewan have Long QT syndrome, an inherited heart condition that can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death.
Read more: Postcode lottery for foetal cardiac scans
Mrs Brown's mother, sister, nephew and some cousins have also been diagnosed, but the faults were only picked up by chance after Mrs Brown underwent routine blood pressure check in 2012, including an electrocardiogram (ECG).
Following her diagnosis other family members were tested, including her daughter Abby, now aged 10, who was found not to be a carrier of the Long QT gene.
Mrs Brown said: "I feel very passionately about encouraging regular screening to diagnose undetected heart conditions.
"We are the lucky few who had an incidental diagnosis."
Mrs Brown and her family have been able to reduce their risk by taking beta blockers and avoiding certain common over the counter medications.
Read more: Call for routine cardiac screening in schools
She added: "I feel very fortunate for this knowledge although the burden of know is at times challenging, especially for my teenage son."
It comes as figures today[Fri] reveal that 16 per cent of people with a deadly inherited heart condition are only diagnosed after having a cardiac arrest, while 18 per cent are diagnosed after a sudden death in the family.
The figures have been released by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to highlight the need for better diagnosis.
Read more: Warning 50,000 Scots carry deadly heart defect
The charity estimates that around 620,000 people in the UK have a faulty heart gene, and it is urging people to speak to relatives about any early sudden deaths or premature heart disease in the family.
Once someone has been diagnosed with an inherited heart condition, genetic testing should be carried out on first-degree relatives – a process called cascade testing.
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “All too often, people aren’t familiar with their family history, or they aren’t aware that a sudden death might be linked to an underlying heart condition.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here