Work on common code for heart illness begins

When D Venkatesh, a 25-year-old Bangalore-based footballer, succumbed to a massive cardiac arrest during a football game on March 22, experts in India debated how young Indians in metropolis, including Mumbai, were contracting more heart ailments. But, it was anecdotal information the cardiologists were referring to, with no data or actual reasons to back up their claim of cardiac ailments becoming a trend.

Though cardiovascular diseases manifest themselves differently in Indians than Americans, a lack of Indianised guidelines has for years been forcing doctors here to follow the European or US guidelines.

It is to solve such problems that the American College of Cardiology (ACC), as a part of its global programme to standardise cardiac care, has tied up with four city hospitals.

Aim: To collate cardiac ailment data of outdoor patients arriving at the cardiology departments in city hospitals and formulate India-relevant road map to treat cardiac illnesses.

Stating that doctors have long been following the American model, Dr Prafulla Kerkar, head of the department of cardiology, KEM Hospital said, “Though we have a vast database and experience, there is no information or guidelines revolving around patients. It will be interesting to collate our own data, analyse it and formulate guidelines.” KEM Hospital, which is part of the study, gets 300 cardiac ailment patients in its OPD daily.

Stating that the guidelines will usher in uniformity in treatment, Dr Ganesh Kumar, head of cardiovascular department at Hiranandani Hospital, said, “If you look at 100 prescriptions for a single cardiac ailment, each will be different. This is because we don’t have a uniform plan of cardiac treatment. For example, betablockers must be given to every patient suffering a heart attack. But the prescriptions suggest that while some have been administered betablockers, some have not, some get a 1/2 dose and some 1/4.”

Lack of uniformity in the treatment also sets the emotional patients thinking that they have not received proper treatment. “People going for more than two opinions notice the disparity in prescription, and suspect doctors of not treating him well. This part will be taken care of,” added Dr Kumar.

The ACC will have their representatives in 10 hospitals in the country to help the doctors collect and document the data. In the city, KEM Hospital, Hiranandani Hospital, Asian Heart Institute hospital and the Bombay Hospital will be part of the study.
Revealing why the ACC decided to go global with their cardiac study, its senior director Bredan Mullen said, “In America, there are rising number of people of Asian origin. Also a third of the doctors working there are of Indian origin. It is therefore necessary to modify our guidelines. India is our first attempt to go international, following which we plan to launch a similar project in China and Brazil by the year-end.”