Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Quit smoking, keep off heart problems, cardiologsits tell youth

Mumbai (PTI): Stay away from smoking and fast food, advocate eminent cardiologists to youths as the number of young people suffering from heart problems are on the increase.

The number young people coming with heart ailments for treatment was gradually increasing but no statistics are available," they said.

It was important to have a national statistics to work on proper policies and programmes to make a healthy society, , they said citing the example of American Collelge of Cardiologists' programme on diet restriction and compulsory exercises for youth.

"Today, it is a scary situation as we get young people in late twenties and thirtees with heart problems," eminent cardiologist Dr Samuel Mathew told the media on wednesday.

"Since we do not have the statistics on young adults, the civic bodies should prepare epidemiological data so that the country can have proper statistics to work on various policies and programmes," he said.

Angioplasty is a common intervention choice to avoid bypass surgery and "we try to avoid surgery on a young person and even angioplasty," he said.

Mathew demonstrated two difficult cases of 100 per cent blockages in patients (71-year-old man and 47-year-old woman) with low heart function for the benefit of 1,500 cardiologists who were attending the international cardiology meet at Bangkok.

Other doctors who participated in the angioplasty demonstration were Jamshed Dalal, Anil Sharma, Nitin Gokhale and Ajit Menon.

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