This is what 50-year-old blokes did first after Shane Warne died

In the wake of Shane Warne’s death men in their fifties suddenly started paying attention to the call to get their heart health checked.

Cricketing great Shane Warne lost his life to a heart attack but his enduring legacy will be to save the lives of others from the same fate.

In the week since his death doctors are reporting what’s being called the ‘Shane Warne effect’, with a surge in men asking their doctors to check out their heart health.

The Heart Foundation said traffic to its website searching for heart attack related content doubled the day Shane Warne’s death was reported and has remained high ever since with nearly 3000 poeple visiting in the last week.

People were most interested in reading about the warning signs of a heart attack and nearly 1200 people used the foundation’s age calculator.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Karen Price said almost two in three GP’s she had spoken in regular forums in the past week were reporting that men were talking to their doctor about their own heart attack risks.

Shane Warne has had an effect on every day Australians’ lives in so many ways.

“Fifty to 60 per cent said people came in talking about it (Shane Warne’s death) and then wanted to know information about their own heart health,” Dr Price said.

It mirrors the famous 2013 phenomenon when actress Angelina Jolie revealed she had undergone a double mastectomy to eliminate her risk of breast cancer, which led to a 300 per cent increase in other women undertaking the procedure.

Australian Medical Association vice president Dr Chris Moy said Warne’s death had “shined a light on the fact that heart disease can creep up on you and you can die suddenly in your sleep.”

St Kilda GP Grant Bashki said: “One celebrity talking about a health issue is worth 1000 health professors”.

Cardiologist Dr Elizabeth Shaw says the Warne effect “will save hundreds if not thousands of lives”. Picture: Adam Yip

Cardiologist Dr Elizabeth Shaw said she expected to see an uptick in people booking in for cardiovascular screening in the next few days, weeks and months.

“There will be a ‘Shane Warne effect’,” Dr Shaw said.

“It will save hundreds if not thousands of lives.”

She said while people go for annual skin cancer checks, they don’t always think to have their heart tested.

Dr Shaw, a structural and interventional specialist, said during the pandemic people with heart symptoms had been avoiding going to their doctor or to hospital for fear of getting Covid-19.

As a result they had started seeing people present for the first time with serious heart damage that could have been avoided.

“Last year we were seeing people with far more damage to their heart than we expected, things like ruptured ventricles, which we don’t normally see, especially in capital cities,” Dr Shaw said.

The Heart Foundation is urging nine million Australians aged over 45 and indigenous Australians aged over 30 to honour Warne’s legacy by going to their GP for a heart health check.

“We’re recommending that everybody that age have a heart check,” National Heart Foundation acting CEO Professor Gary Jennings said.

Heart disease is Australia’s leading cause of death and an estimated 1.5 million people are at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next five years but most are unaware of their blood pressure, cholesterol and other risk factors.

Before the last election, News Corp won a new Medicare rebate for a Heart Health check and while more than 250,000 Aussies have had the test but numbers dropped off during Covid.

Barely any of those eligible for the test are getting it done, doctors don’t use it because it is too bureaucratic and there is uncertainty over its continued funding.

Many more people will be at risk of a heart attack after Covid with data from the US and UK showing even people who had asymptomatic cases of the virus are having heart attacks after an infection.

Prof Jennings is urging anyone, not matter now young, who had Covid to have a heart health check.

What is concerning cardiologists even more is there is no Medicare rebate at all for a revolutionary 3D scan of the heart which can determine which people at intermediate risk of a heart attack have blocked arteries that could cost them their life.

Cricketer Darren Lehmann with Shane Warne.

Hobart cardiologist Dr Warwick Bishop, who set up online heart screening service virtualheartcan.com, said if Warne had been given such a test he might still be alive today.

“I was so frustrated because I knew that in my perfect world where I think we should be looking to image men at 50 years of age and image women at 60 years of age we might have identified risks before this had occurred,” Dr Bishop said.

The test is like a mammogram of the heart and can identify plaque lining the walls of the arteries that can cause a heart attack and could prevent 70 per cent of heart attacks, he said.

Thirty per cent of heart attacks are repeat events yet only one in three people get this intensive care to prevent a second heart attack. The Heart Foundation wants both major political parties to commit to fund this at the election.

WARNE’S DEATH A ‘KICK IN THE BUTT’

For Erik Bigalk, Shane Warne’s death was not only unbelievable but it was also the “kick in the butt” he needed to take action around his own heart health.

The 54-year-old is convinced the tragic loss of Warne will have an important legacy and “will save a lot of lives”.

Shocked by the cricketer’s death, Mr Bigalk this week started googling information about heart attacks and completed an online heart risk assessment tool which found he was at “intermediate risk” for a heart attack himself.

He has now been referred for a 3D scan of his heart via the website virtualheartscan.com.

“I was just going ‘Geez, you know, he was younger than me’ and I think that was really sort of that moment when the lights went on,” Mr Bigalk said.

Erik Bigalk 54, from the Fraser Coast reacted to Shane Warne's heart attack by taking the online test Virtual Heart Check. Picture: Brad Fleet

Formerly a fit high level soccer player, Mr Bigalk said a broken leg had seen him reduce his activity while he completed a new book Humble Leaders that relays the extraordinary lives of 12 ordinary women.

He had long been in awe of Warne’s sporting talent since he migrated to Australia from Germany in 1988 and his first taste of Australian culture was a full day cricket match.

Later he moved to live near Warne in Melbourne.

“Not that he would ever know me but when you live in that same sort of area, you kind of think you could spot him any day you can assume a bit of an association with someone like that,” he said.

“I feel like it’s been a really strong inspiration for me to get tested right now. So I would thank him for that.”

While he has never played club cricket, Mr Bigalk has certainly played the backyard version and learned how to “have a hit and try to not spill a beer or break a window”.

“I think there’s 120 Heart attacks a day in Australia, and a lot of them don’t survive but it takes one Shane Warne or Rod Marsh to kind of get everyone oh my god, right, we’ve got to do something and. I’m guilty of that as anyone,” Mr Bigalk said.

“It’s just sad that it took a legend like Shawn to change to you know, parts to it, to bring that home.”