BENGALURU: Besides an increase in coronary heart-related deaths, Karnataka is also seeing a rise in the number of people going through angioplasty. Karnataka’s renowned Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Research Centre alone has conducted 10,000 angioplasty procedures in the past one year. Mysuru’s Jayadeva Hospital has conducted 6,500 angioplasties, and at least 30 per cent of them are people below 40 years of age.
“There is definitely an increase in burden of cardiac diseases. While there are many who present at later stages when the heart is already ruptured and needs a major surgery, or doesn’t give us a window to save the patient, there are a few who identify symptoms and come to us. We have been able to save lives through medication and also angioplasty,” explained Dr Manjunath CN, Director, Jayadeva Hospitals.
Appreciating the government’s budget announcement of mapping cath labs to Jayadeva, which will help especially in rural areas, Dr Abhijit Vilas Kulkarni, renowned cardiologist, Apollo Hospital, Bannerghatta Road, says, “There are three reasons for rising cases of angioplasty: increasing burden of the disease itself, awareness created around the disease and also increase in screening. Even private hospitals conduct about 450 cases per month. These are huge numbers.”
Dr Manjunath says “stress has become the new smoking” for the urban population. Apart from a few major factors like heredity, lifestyle and diabetes control, stress and pollution are also contributing to coronary heart disease. For rural areas, along with predisposed heart disease are factors like diabetes, use of tobacco, smoking and alcohol intake. Dr Abhijit says, “As Indians, we are predisposed to having heart diseases, and smoking is prevalent in rural areas. Earlier, it was thought to be a disease of the affluent, but that is no longer the case.”
According to doctors, lack of awareness in rural areas makes people report the disease in its later stages. “While urban areas have screening for cholesterol, TMT, echo etc, rural areas do not have awareness and such screenings. The budget announcement has been made, but we are lagging in infrastructure. If Jayadeva maps it, the government can take care of the financial part,” Dr Abhijit adds.
Meanwhile, doctors say coronary heart disease is common in males, but nowadays even young women who have stress and uncontrolled diabetes are showing up. However, more males have undergone angioplasty.