![Glynn Evans, 76, was on holiday in Cornwall when he suffered a heart attack](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/07/10/TELEMMGLPICT000385054193_17206444935700_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqrpfQw2hJyG_yckwxPAr0gmyy-GsNrhPQbLesooHneHs.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Retired teacher tells of 18-hour wait after suffering heart attack
Glynn Evans’s experience highlights ‘worst heart care crisis in living memory’, British Heart Foundation said
![Glynn Evans, 76, was on holiday in Cornwall when he suffered a heart attack](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/07/10/TELEMMGLPICT000385054193_17206444935700_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqrpfQw2hJyG_yckwxPAr0gmyy-GsNrhPQbLesooHneHs.jpeg?imwidth=680)
A retired teacher was forced to wait 18 hours to be treated in hospital after suffering a heart attack.
Glynn Evans, 76, started to feel an indigestion-like pain in his chest while on holiday with his family in Bodmin, Cornwall.
After initially dismissing the symptoms, his wife, Lyn Evans, rang 999 around 8pm the same day after realising something was seriously wrong.
An ambulance didn’t arrive until the next morning, and then it was forced to join a queue of 24 others when it arrived at Royal Cornwall Hospital, in Truro.
He was finally seen by a doctor at 2pm – some 18 hours after initially calling the emergency services and a day after symptoms first emerged.
All ambulance trusts should respond to category 2 calls – including heart attacks – in 18 minutes on average. During 2023-24, the average response time for category 2 calls was twice as high, at 36 minutes 15 seconds.
The incident in which Mr Evans suffered his heart attack was in 2022.
Mr Evans, from Bourne in Lincolnshire, who is now fronting a British Heart Foundation (BHF) campaign, said: “My son-in-law was going to take me to hospital, but said the last thing he wanted was for me to keel over in the back of his car.
“So, we waited for the ambulance. It eventually turned up the next morning.”
The grandfather of six said he then had to wait in the ambulance while it queued and “a doctor had to come out to me to do a blood test”.
“He came back later and told me that it wasn’t good news – I’d had a heart attack.”
The BHF has launched a new campaign – Hearts Need More – to fix what it says is “the worst heart care crisis in living memory”.
Mr Evans, who now lives with heart failure, said: “The doctor who treated me was furious that I had to wait so long.
“I’m not sure my heart failure would be quite as bad if it hadn’t taken so long to treat me,” he added.
“There’s nothing that anyone can do about my long wait now. But I don’t want anyone else to have to wait that long and miss out on the best available treatment.
“That’s why I’m supporting the BHF’s Hearts Need More campaign.”
Dr Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive of BHF, said: “Glynn’s story makes it clear: we’re in the grip of the worst heart-care crisis the country has ever faced. What happened to Glynn was unacceptable, and it wasn’t just a one-off.”
‘Families ripped apart’
She said: “For the first time on record, we’re seeing a sustained rise in early heart and circulatory disease deaths. That means thousands more families ripped apart.
“Our new Government has the power to stop this ongoing tragedy once and for all, but it will take everyone’s help.”
Latest figures for 2022, show that an average of 750 people a week aged 75 or under died from cardiovascular disease in England – the highest annual total since 2008.
It comes as new data published by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives revealed that 32,000 patients could have come to harm in May this year alone because they had to wait more than an hour outside the hospital in an ambulance.
This was up from 30,000 in April, with more than 100,000 waiting longer than 30 minutes. The target to hand over is within 15 minutes.
Some 148 patients were forced to wait ten hours or more in May, double the figure in the same month last year.
A spokesman for Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care System said: “We are sorry that we were unable to provide Mr Evans a timely response in 2022.
“Any occasion where the care we provide falls below the high standards our patients deserve and rightly expect is unacceptable.”