The burden of Heart attacks and un-answered questions
The burden of Heart attacks and un-answered questions
Some of the recent unfortunate incidents in India and overseas around deaths related to cardiac problems have brought back the attention of every healthcare professional on coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as ischaemic heart disease and its burden on society at large. According to the National Crome record Bureau (NCRB), While in 2014, a total of 18,309 people died due to Heart Attacks, the number increased year after year and claimed 28,005 lives in 2019, up by 53% in five years.
In a way, we can say that every hour more than 3 people died in India because of heart attacks and the majority of these deaths happens outside the hospital.
The mortality data from the Registrar General of India shows more than 30% of adult Indians died due to heart attacks.
This does not stop here. Indians are known to have the highest coronary artery disease (CAD) rates. One more study revealed acute MI prevalence of >11% in India in patients aged below 40 years. This clearly highlights the seriousness of the problem and the kind of population that we are losing because of the deaths due to AMI.
This brings us to the questions which are to be addressed and looked into:
If the incidents of heart attacks have gone up, so has the healthcare infrastructure in India. Then, why the number of deaths because of heart attacks have not come down?
Can we do something about it?
Can we minimize this loss of life because of heart attacks?
Since the mortality rates are significantly higher outside the hospitals, Is it possible to save some of these lives and help people reach hospitals or emergency care centers in time?
Despite having all the facilities and technologies and increased awareness around healthcare, why is that we are not able to do early risk stratification
Can we do something to make suspected cases more compliant?
Every Life counts and we need to think about the way and means to minimize this loss of life.