THREE-QUARTERS of people who suffer a heart attack in the North-East are now surviving, according to data released by the British Heart Foundation.

But the charity has warned news of fewer heart attack deaths should not mask the devastating burden that heart failure is now placing on the North-East.

Its new television and text-to-donate campaign is urging support for its Mending Broken Hearts Appeal which is funding regenerative medicine research that could cure the condition.

The charity's latest figures show 77 per cent of people in the North-East struck by a heart attack now survive. That figure was only 66 per cent just eight years ago.

A study from Oxfordshire between 1974 and 1978 showed a staggering two-thirds of men and women aged 65-69 died from their heart attack.

Even though heart attack deaths are decreasing, the BHF says there is little evidence that is also true of heart failure.

The most recent audit shows as many as 70 per cent of heart failure cases are heart attack survivors and an estimated 38,000 people now live with the condition in the North-East.

Heart failure occurs when so much heart muscle is damaged by the heart attack that the heart can't pump blood around the body as well as it should. Three-quarters of people with severe heart failure will not live beyond five years.

Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the BHF, said: "We're undergoing an unprecedented period of change when it comes to the North-East's heart health.

"But this means that more and more people are surviving heart attacks with damaged hearts and there is now an urgent need to find ways of reversing that damage."