PREMIUM
Desmond Julian, the Edinburgh cardiologist who developed the UK's first coronary care unit, transforming the care of heart attack patients
WHEN the British Heart Foundation was founded sixty years ago by a group of cardiologists, the standard treatment for a heart attack was bed rest.
“Not surprisingly, most people died,” says Professor James Leiper, of the Institute for Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at The University of Glasgow.
The advances in the treatment of cardiovascular disease and birth heart defects would have been un-imaginable at the time, he says. Most have been driven by Scots scientists.
The development of the cholesterol lowering drug statins, a treatment that has saved millions of lives, globally was pioneered in Edinburgh.