‘ Awareness about heart disease poor in country’

Ahead of ‘ World Heart Day’, medical experts have urged people to pay more attention to the signs and symptoms of heart diseases, to ensure early diagnosis and treatment, which can help bring down the number of associated deaths. According to experts, enough attention has not been paid to heart failure and thus the condition has been silently and rapidly killing patients and leading to repeated hospitalisations.

According to senior consultant, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Dr Viveka Kumar, in India, the overall awareness of heart diseases, especially heart failure, is very poor. “People lack basic understanding of heart failure, which is a progressive disease that weakens the heart muscle and impacts its ability to pump blood across the body. They often confuse it with heart attack, which is a sudden cardiac event. Most heart failure patients are admitted to the hospital at an advanced stage of the disease, as they fail to recognise the symptoms and are not aware of the advantages of treating it at an early stage,” said Dr Kumar.

Experts claimed that common symptoms that should raise an alarm, include shortness of breath, swelling in the ankles or legs or abdomen, need for elevated pillows while sleeping to breathe properly and unexplained fatigue.

“With the increasing burden of heart failure in country and the associated high death rates, it is necessary to recognise it as a health priority. Most often, patients are diagnosed when they are first hospitalised with aggravated symptoms. There is an urgent need to raise mass awareness across the country,” said president, Cardiological Society of India, Dr K. Sarat Chandra.