About half the people who have been screened for heart disease in regional Tasmania as part of a new trial were found to be already at risk.
As part of the trial, free heart ultrasounds are being offered to Tasmanians over the age of 65 who live in regional areas.
The Director of the Menzies Research Institute, Professor Tom Marwick, has told a forum about half the patients examined already had damage to their hearts.
Professor Marwick says such damage is a precursor to heart failure.
“There is work to be done in the community in terms of changing the risk factors that drive the disease to begin with,” he said.
“We have more smoking, more obesity, more high blood pressure, higher cholesterol than the rest of Australia.
“In many markers, we’re either the most unhealthy of running second to the Northern Territory”.
He says early detection of heart disease is vital.
“We believe that before people develop heart failure which is a serious illness, requiring multiple hospital admissions, there is a stage where there’s some cardiac damage where potentially we could change the course of the disease if we could identify it,” he said.