KARACHI: Heart diseases cause most deaths in Pakistan
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Dec 31: Pakistanis are facing an epidemic of heart diseases, which are the most lethal ailments confronting them. Oddly enough, most Pakistanis are not aware of this.
Of all heart diseases they face, the most serious one is coronary, or ischemic, heart disease which results in angina and heart attacks.
This particular ailment used to occur mainly in retired people. However, over a period of 30 years the average age of Pakistanis affected by it has moved into the 40s and 50s.
The disease is responsible for over 50 per cent of all deaths in Pakistani males of working age and about 90 per cent of all sudden deaths. Because it kills or maims a Pakistani male in the prime of his career, the economic and social burden of the disease is immense.
There are more than 4 million patients of angina or survivors of heart attacks. The pool of undetected coronary disease cases is estimated to be at least three times this number.
So said the executive director of National Cardio-Vascular Diseases on Tuesday at a press conference. Prof Azhar Masood Faruqui told newsmen that the patient care services, preventive cardiology and teaching programmes for heart diseases are vastly inadequate for the country’s needs.
“A crash programme to address the problem is needed so that the results achieved by the western countries could be replicated here,” he said.
The heart diseases could be treated in either of two ways — through surgery or cardiovascular interventions. In cardiovascular interventions the patient’s chest needn’t be opened, said the NICVD director.
Because they are not open heart procedures, this is a safer and quicker route to recovery, especially for children. At the moment the cost of interventionist procedures is about the same as that of surgery, said Prof Faruqui.
“However, in the next few years the cost of stents and balloons which are used in these procedures is likely to decrease considerably. So in the long run the cost of intervention procedures will only be a fraction of that of surgery.”
The NICVD’s executive director said his organization was going to host, from Jan 16 to 20, an international conference on cardiovascular interventions. The congress will be titled Cardiovascular-Interventions in Developing Countries, or simply CDC.
For the conference the cardiology units in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad/Rawalpindi were being linked through a video conferencing network, said Prof Faruqui. During the conference 12 experts from abroad will present their papers.
“Through the video conferencing network physicians, surgeons and other staff of the three cardio units of the country will be taking part simultaneously in the proceedings of the workshop.”
Prof Faruqui said besides lectures, several demonstrations and presentations would be made by the experts attending the workshop. People from all over the country, suffering from heart diseases, may send their histories to the NICVD.
The important ones would be discussed during the workshop, he said.
Answering a question, the NICVD’s director said last year his staff had performed about 5,000 procedures and 2,000 surgeries. Of the 5,000 procedures about 500 were interventionist in nature.
In response to another question, Prof Faruqui said deaths as a result of cardiological procedures were rare. “The success rate for operations, on the other hand, was 96 per cent, which is satisfactory.”
He told the newsmen that the conference on cardiovascular interventions would be inaugurated by Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali.
