The advancement in the medical sciences in last decade has brought in many treatment options to help people live healthy and long life. Unfortunately, there is very low awareness in India about the disease and the available treatment options. Therefore, with an aim to spread awareness about heart failure, The Times of India kickoff an initiative - Beat Heart Failure in partnership with Novartis. In this endeavor, multiple panel discussions were conducted with the leading doctors of India’s best hospitals. Doctors from GKNM Hospital, Coimbatore have also participated in this initiative and talked about the symptoms of heart failure, its management and treatment.
Dr Ram (BSC, MBBS, D CH, AB, FA AP, CHC QM, MMM, CPE, FA CPE) Chief Executive Officer of the hospital congratulated! The Times of India for the pan India awareness campaign Beat Heart Failure and said that TOI strives to educate the public about the causes, prevention and management about heart failure by providing relevant information. GKNM Hospital is a pioneer in Interventional cardiology with highly equipped Cathay and advanced Echocardiography department.
Doctors who have participated in the discussion are:
Dr Raja K. Abu: Department Chairman – Interventional Cardiologist, Director for Cardiovascular Research & Innovation.
Dr R. Shana Sara: Chief Consultant – Heart Failure Clinic & Echocardiography.
Dr Abu compared the heart with a water pump. He said that the condition of heart failure begin when the heart is unable to pump enough blood into the circulatory system of the human body, and weakness of the heart leads to backfill of the deoxygenated blood into the lungs causing congestion.
The commonest cause of heart failure is heart attack, which often leads to compromised functioning of the heart, impacting blood supply to the organs of the human body.
Dr Sundaram also added and explained that there is an adverse impact on pumping capacity of the cardiac muscles in heart attack, due to that heart attack becomes the prime reason for heart failure. Nowadays, these incidences of heart attack are increasing at a higher rate in the younger age group, and our youngsters are more exposed to risk factors like hypertension, diabetes, obesity, smoking, sleeping apnea cause of present high voltage working and societal environment. The inability of the people to control the pre-existing comorbidity often make them victims of heart attack and consequently heart failure.
The signs and symptoms of heart failure begin to surface with the gradual weakening of heart muscles and reduced pumping of blood by heart, elaborated Dr Sundaram. The evident symptom to appear in heart failure is breathing difficulty. The patient will experience breathlessness during simple activities like walking or climbing stairs. As the disease progresses, patients exhibit enhanced shortness of breath in routine activities and reduced effort tolerance. Fluid build-up in organs is also seen on account of the backfilling of the blood in lungs, abdomen or legs.
Dr Abu highlighted that people seek medical attention when they are confronted with significant difficulties like inability to sleep, getting up at night, failure or complain of the increased problems in performing their routine tasks. The sudden change in their functioning capacities makes them reach out to us. At this stage, working of heart is severely deteriorated in many cases.
How advanced medical treatment offering a new lease of life to heart failure patients
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