Screening for unrecognised heart valve disease

Elizabeth

What are your thoughts about medical research generally? Have you ever taken part in any other medical research?

No, I haven’t. But I think it’s a good thing. I think it should happen. And it’d probably save a lot of people’s lives and, you know, when they don’t know that there isn’t anything wrong with them, and there is, so obviously it would be a good thing.

And if you were offered another chance to take part in medical research would you be interested?

Definitely [laughs]. Definitely yes I would.

Norman

 I felt quite happy. I felt well informed and I didn’t feel uncomfortable about the idea. In fact, I’m all in favour of taking part in studies, because I’ll probably learn more about myself and what my problems are and what, what I might be able to do about it, what the Health Service could do for me, than by being outside. So, every time a study comes up, I say, “Yes, please.”

Well, I mean there’s, obviously there’s a wider community interest, in that the more we know about a variety of conditions and what the outcomes are from various treatments the better. And so, it’s, you could say it’s partly altruistic. I’m happy to be part of a club. But it’s also rather selfish, I suppose. I’m very happy to have people taking an interest in me.

Susie

And she said to strip off to the waist, which I did, you know, and I had to lay on the couch, and lay on my left side, and I didn’t see the screen. And she came from the back and just put the monitor on, just on my chest, like. And you know, she was just so friendly you don’t even realise, you know. It made you feel so comfortable and, you know, I was really comfortable and yet I’m usually sort of a bit strung up. But I felt really comfortable.

Tell me more about that, you’re usually strung up. Do you mean you might have been a bit anxious about having to strip off and?

[Laughs] Well, I don’t know whether I ’m allowed to say this or not, but I don’t like standing in there with nothing on the top, and I said to her, I said, “The only thing I don’t like about this”, I said, “is showing everything I’ve got.” [Laughs]. And she smiled and she said, “No.” She said, “We don’t take any notice.” She said, “In fact, there was one lady that walked out when she knew that she had to strip down.” So, I mean, at our age we’re not used to it, are we, you know? But I’d still rather do that than not go at all. So, you know, I overcame that problem [laughs].

Pamela and Anthony

Pamela: Well, she just said that there was some sort of narrowing of a thing, but it was normal, you know, in view of age, and she said, “You might be called to do something else but, you know, don’t worry about anything. You’ll be alright.” So we came out of there and didn’t worry about it at all, did we?

Anthony: No. Well, in my case, of course, the valve occasionally doesn’t sort of seal properly. I think that’s what she was saying. It doesn’t close properly. And she said did I feel anything? And I said “Well no, I’ve never been conscious of anything at all.” I think since I’ve had it done I’ve sort of thought about it a bit more, but I still haven’t noticed anything. I can still run up and down the path if I want to and things like this.

Pamela: Yes.

Anthony: It doesn’t appear to have done anything, you know, being conscious of it hasn’t affected me in any way.