00:01Shortness of breath, tiredness and swollen ankles are all symptoms many people can live with for months, sometimes even years,
00:08without seeking medical advice.
00:10But they can also be early warning signs of heart failure or lung disease.
00:15That's the focus of Beat Breathlessness, a free community health service in Liverpool delivered by Everton in the community, working
00:23alongside NHS partners.
00:25We have the Beat Breathlessness Clinic here that runs every Wednesday out of the People's Place.
00:30So we can have patients who self-refer into that clinic or they can be referred by their GP.
00:36But we also do community outreach as well.
00:38So the other days of the week, we're going out to various community organisations and delivering like an initial screening
00:43to assess whether that person needs sort of more escalated testing and follow up testing here at the clinic.
00:50And it involves looking at a number of different cardiovascular and respiratory tests, all of which are mechanisms behind breathlessness
00:56symptoms for a lot of people.
00:58The programme's funded by the British Heart Foundation and supported by patient experts from the Pumping Marvellous Foundation.
01:05As the UK's heart failure patient-led charity, what's really, really important is supporting an excellent opportunity like this in
01:13the community to identify, diagnose and treat early heart failure.
01:19Heart failure affects a million people across the UK.
01:22It's highly prevalent in areas of high deprivation.
01:25And it's really important to get people early.
01:28We know when we get people early, it's treatable.
01:31Lifelong Everton fan, Raymond, came into Everton in the community's our place for an assessment and has since been referred
01:38to Aintree Hospital for further testing.
01:41Parking in the hospitals is awful.
01:43Getting to hospitals with bad legs is awful.
01:46So here I could park right outside.
01:49I was inside.
01:51There's no hospital sort of fear.
01:53You go straight in.
01:55He saw me straight away.
01:56He was really pleasant.
01:58And I was out.
01:59And then I went to the hospital when there was something possibly to find.
02:03You can escalate the testing.
02:04We have echocardiogram and spirometry here as well.
02:07So we can really have someone with a diagnosis of asthma, COPD or heart failure by the end of their
02:13visit to the clinic.
02:14They're then absorbed into the NHS care system.
02:18So we have good links with the Liverpool hospitals to enable treatment going forward.
02:23Because the word heart failure is sometimes challenging and people don't like it generally.
02:28So, you know, how do you counteract that failure?
02:30Working in partnership in trying to prove that actually we can find heart failure quicker by deploying it in a
02:37community.
02:37We can diagnose it by deploying it in a community.
02:40And we can treat it by deploying it in the community.
02:43Two years ago, I said to the doctor, is it just old age?
02:48Two years later now, and with your help here, I know it isn't just old age.
02:53It's things that can be maybe taken on with exercise and what have you.
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