60 years of pioneering research and innovation
BHF research has had a profound impact on the lives of people affected by heart and circulatory diseases since its inception in 1961. Read our research impact summary to find out more.
What's on this page:
- Research impact reports
- Heart attack
- Heart failure and pulmonary hypertension
- Abnormal heart rhythm
- Congenital heart disease, inherited heart disease, valve problems
- High blood pressure, stroke and vascular dementia
- Identifying and reducing risk
- Funding the best people and the best research for future successes
Our research impact reports
From April 2022 to March 2023, we spent 80p in every £1 donated on directly on lifesaving research. Learn more about the incredible impact the research we've funded has had.
Our research impact reports
Heart attack
We’ve made huge progress in treating heart attacks. Read how we helped set up the first coronary care units.
From pioneering defibrillators in ambulances to CPR training and public access defibrillators, find out how we’ve been helping to save lives since 1961.
Before the mid-1970s, there was no treatment for heart attacks apart from rest and pain relief. BHF-funded research helped change that.
When treating heart attacks, should doctors unblock all blocked arteries or just the main culprit? BHF-funded research helped answer that question.
Some heart attacks can be caused by partial blockage of your heart’s arteries. In the past they were considered “minor” and didn’t always get the treatment they needed. BHF-funded research helped solve that problem.
More sensitive blood tests could help diagnose heart attacks, but it wasn’t clear how well they worked. BHF-funded research helped answer that question.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify people at high risk of a fatal heart attack years before it strikes – thanks to new research that we've funded.
Heart scans have come a long way, from echocardiography to CT scans and cardiac MRI. Discover how these technologies are helping patients.
Our research has helped find ways to predict which people are at higher risk of heart attacks, and could lead to new treatments.
BHF-funded researchers have pioneered a new way to do heart bypass surgery, keeping the heart beating during the procedure.
Heart failure and pulmonary hypertension
Until the late 1990s, getting a definitive heart failure diagnosis was difficult. BHF-funded research helped change that.
Learn about the breakthroughs BHF-funded researchers have made in medicines to treat heart failure.
We’ve been developing and testing new ways of delivering care for heart failure patients, to improve the lives of people living with heart failure.
Read how our work has helped improve heart transplants and make more organs available.
Heart failure cannot be cured. To change that, we’ve been funding research into ways to repair or regrow damaged heart tissue.
In the past, severe thalassemia (an inherited blood disorder) was often fatal by early adulthood. BHF-funded research has changed that.
Our research has increased the survival and quality of life of people leaving with pulmonary hypertension.
BHF-funded researchers have identified genes responsible for this life-threatening condition and are developing new treatments.
We’re funding research to develop artificial intelligence tools to better diagnose pulmonary hypertension and to predict how the condition will progress.
Abnormal heart rhythm
Find out how our research helped to kick-start the development of pacemaker technology that paved the way for modern pacemakers.
Atrial fibrillation is a major cause of strokes. Our research is finding out how best to treat atrial fibrillation to prevent strokes.
Some athletes die suddenly from heart problems, so diagnosing them before they happen is vital. But this isn’t easy, especially as there may be ethnic differences to consider. BHF-funded research has helped improve diagnosis of heart problems in Black athletes.
We’ve been funding research to test whether smartphone apps can help diagnose heart rhythm problems.
Find out how our research has led to improvements in cardiac ablation - a procedure used to treat arrhythmia.
Congenital heart disease, inherited heart disease and valve problems
We’ve supported crucial breakthroughs that have improved the care for patients with congenital heart disease, from birth to adulthood.
We’ve funded research that helped show the value of MRI scans for children with congenital heart disease, as well as improving the scans and making them more available.
Each day, around 13 babies in the UK are diagnosed with congenital heart disease. But often, we don't understand why the baby’s heart hasn't developed properly. We’ve been funding research to discover the genetic causes of congenital heart disease.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is an inherited disease of the heart muscle. BHF-funded research helped identify the faulty genes causing the conditions and we’ve helped make genetic testing available to the families affected.
Our research has helped to develop a risk prediction tool to spot the risk of sudden cardiac death in children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, so it can be prevented.
Dilated cardiomyopathy means that your heart can’t pump blood around your body properly. There is no cure, and although it can be treated using common heart medications, there are no treatments specifically for the condition. We’ve been funding research to change this.
Some people with Marfan syndrome have weak blood vessels which are at risk of bursting. This can be fatal. We’ve been funding research to stop this.
Thousands of people in the UK have heart valve replacement each year, and many benefit from the research and advances that we’ve made possible.
High blood pressure, stroke and vascular dementia
High blood pressure affects 1 in 3 people in the UK and increases your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. We’ve been funding research to find out the best ways to treat high blood pressure.
We’ve been funding research to prevent strokes and improve treatment and recovery after a stroke.
We’ve been funding research to understand the causes of vascular dementia to better prevent and treat it.
Pre-eclampsia affects up to one in 25 pregnancies in the UK and can be serious. We’ve been funding research to understand its causes in order to better prevent it.
Identifying and reducing risk
Our research helped to prove that lowering blood cholesterol using statins prevent the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Our research has helped us understand more about the side effects people can experience while taking statins, and that they may not be as common as you think.
Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is a genetic condition that causes exceptionally high levels of cholesterol, often leading to a heart attack or stroke at a young age unless it is treated. We’ve funded research that helped identify the genetic faults causing FH and developed a test to spot them.
We’ve been funding research to find signals in the blood that could help doctors identify people at risk of heart and circulatory diseases and find new treatments.
Diabetes can damage arteries and veins, putting people at risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases. We’ve been funding research to find out how best to protect the heart and blood vessels in people with diabetes.
Diabetes can lead to blood vessel damage and raise your risk of heart disease, blindness and limb amputation. We’ve been funding research to find ways to grow or repair blood vessels damaged by diabetes.
We’ve fought against smoking for decades, from demonstrating that passive smoking in public places kills, to influencing Government policy.
We’ve been funding research to show how air pollution can damage your heart and blood vessels, as well as campaigning to influence Government policy.
We’ve been funding research to show how policy changes to make healthy choices easier could improve all our health, and campaigning for them to happen.
We’ve been funding research that showed the benefits of being physically active at all ages, and for people with heart and circulatory diseases too.
Your mental health can affect your heart health, and vice versa. Our research is helping to understand why, and test new treatments for people with heart and circulatory diseases.
We’ve been funding research to understand better how your ethnic background affects your risk of heart and circulatory diseases and diabetes.
Social and economic factors can significantly affect your risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases and diabetes. We’ve been funding research to better understand why.
Our research has shown that women don’t get the same care for heart attacks as men, which leads to unnecessary deaths. We’ve been funding research to understand and address the reasons why women miss out on heart attack treatments.
Did you know that your parents’ health and lifestyle can influence your risk of heart disease? We’ve been funding research to better understand this.
Our research helped to develop a new diagnostic tool to assess the severity of coronary heart disease.
Funding the best people and the best research for future successes
We are the biggest non-commercial funder of research into cardiovascular research in the UK, funding life-saving research that has improved the lives of millions of people.
Since we began 60 years ago, we’ve been training generations of researchers and supporting world-leading scientists to improve people’s lives.
Translating findings from the lab into advances in human health is not simple and can take decades. We’ve been working to bring science discoveries to patients more quickly.
The Big Beat Challenge is our biggest ever research grant: a global competition with worth up to £30 million. Read about the projects on the shortlist.
People affected by heart and circulatory disease have been helping to shape our work, by sharing their insight and experiences, and helping us to do all we can to meet the needs of those affected.
Since the pandemic hit, many of our researchers have redirected their expertise to the global battle against Covid-19 and are helping us understand more about the effects it can have on the heart and circulatory system.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the NIHR-BHF Cardiovascular Partnership provided a robust framework for the set-up and delivery of impactful Covid-19 research projects across the UK.
During the pandemic, we provided the latest coronavirus updates from our experts, including what Covid-19 means for you if you have a heart or circulatory condition.
We’ve been supporting big data studies, which are vital in understanding what causes diseases and how to prevent and treat them.
Big data and artificial intelligence are helping us to better calculate risk from surgery and from Covid-19. And our BHF Data Science Centre will mean we lead the way in this field for years to come.