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ESC: Prevention Strategy Relies on Lifestyle, Genetics 

The challenge resonates the theme of this year's congress: prevention. In an opening session, ESC president Roberto Ferrari, MD, of the University of Ferrara in Italy, said that preventing heart disease is essential because it has become a costly, long-term disease. . . .

Sir Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at Oxford University in England and a participant in the press conference, addressed the issue of smoking. He said smoking should not be overshadowed by other risk factors for heart disease.

"If you want to kill yourself with smoking you must start early and you must continue," Peto said. If patients do both, they "have a 50% chance of success."

He cited data from the U.K.'s Million Women Study that showed the risk of vascular and all-cause mortality both decrease if a patient stops smoking, and that it continues to decrease the longer the patient stays away from cigarettes.

"Stopping smoking works," Peto said.

Cannon agreed that "for smokers, [quitting] is the single best thing you can do for your health." He pointed to recent data on smoking bans that have shown a 40% reduction in heart attack in the years following the ban.

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