A cardiovascular public health awareness programme was organised at Bharat Heart Institute (BHI), Dehradun to mark the World Heart Day on Sunday.
Dr Chetan Sharma, executive director and chief interventional cardiologist at BHI said, "To prevent the cardiac diseases, we need to change our lifestyle. This includes taking a healthy diet, regular physical activity and avoiding tobacco and smoking." A free medical check up was organised during the programme where around 150 people availed of the services like cardiac consultation, ECG, pacemaker analysis, random blood sugar and blood pressure free of cost.
A 'Walk of Heart' was also organised. According to Sharma, till now BHI has done more than 3000 interventions in the last three years. In the last one and half years, BHI has also performed large number of open-heart surgeries. To spread the awareness on heart diseases, presentations on why pacemakers are required and life Style Modification Programme were also made on the occasion.
Talking about requirement of pacemaker, Dr Sharma said that most common reasons for pacemaker were bradycardia and heart blockage. In bradycardia, heart beats as slowly as 30 beats per minute and the blood supply to body's organs, especially the brain, becomes inadequate. As a result patients are likely to experience symptoms of bradycardia like dizziness, fatigue, fainting, shortness of breath and others.
Heart blockage is a disorder that occurs if an electrical signal is slowed or disrupted as it moves through the heart. Regardless of the underlying cause of an abnormal heart rate, a pacemaker might fix the heart rate fluctuations, he said.