The history of coronary care units.

From the British Heart Foundation, London Coronary heart disease excited little interest among cardiologists in the 1950s. In 1959 only six out of 65 articles in the British Heart Journal were on coronary disease and in 1964 seven of 89 articles were on ischaemic heart disease and 28 on congenital heart disease. There were, however, those who were concemed about how little we then knew about myocardial infarction, among them Professor (now Sir John) McMichael, who initiated research in this field at Hammersmith Hospital, and Gunnar Biorck of Stockholm who wrote: "There are few diseases in the sphere of internal medicine where the average mortality during four to six weeks hospitalization is over 30%, and if the patients with shock are particularly considered, the figure is more than twice as large. It is obvious that the task of treatment and prevention is tremendous and it appears necessary that more energy be directed to a considerable reduction in these figures. The mere quantity of the problem may have prevented us from calling all forces to arms in the 'infarct battle'. However, our surgical colleagues would never accept a mortality of this magnitude and would certainly mobilize personnel and technique to bring such figures down."'