The threat of heart disease has been glaring us since years and making our life complicated. It's already been a leading killer in the West and is now aggressively penetrating its way to India.
According to government data, out of 30 million heart patients in India, 14 million reside in urban areas and 16 million in rural areas. It is further expected that, "If the current trend continues, by the year 2020, the burden of atherothrombotic cardiovascular diseases in India will surpass that of any other country in the world."
Now, you must be wondering the reason for the growth of such disease?
Heart disease doesn’t comes all of a sudden but is dependent on the number of interlinked factors such as ageing, changing lifestyles, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, bad eating habits, the level of activity and rapidly evolving socio-economic determinants like access to healthcare. The growth of heart diseases affects not just the urban and economically well-off but also the under-privileged.
Someone has rightly said, ‘A man can survive on the failure of any organ but when it comes to ‘Heart’, then there is a ‘Big No’. The rate of cardiac problems in India has increased vastly and extended from old people around seventies and eighties to mid forties and fifties. Cardiac problems are due to many reasons. But the final stage of heart failure is mainly due to failure of ventricular functioning and it can be cured by transplanting heart. Heart transplantation is not an easy task. Rather it is very risky and should be done with scrutiny.
In India the first heart transplantation was done by Dr. Kewal Krishan. Yes! You heard it Right!
Dr. Kewal is a renowned top heart transplantation expert in India. Currently, a senior consultant and Program incharge of Heart transplant & Ventricular Assist Devices at Max Superspeciality Hospital Saket, New Delhi. Till date, he has done 7 successful LVAD replacements in India. Dr. Kewal Krishan was trained intensively in the entire spectrum of ventricular assist devices including bridge to transplant, short term and long term devices and destination therapy. He has many publications in international journals to his name in this field including innovative techniques in ventricular assist devices.
He attained all his expertise by doing four years of advanced clinical fellowships at world’s top hospitals including Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN,USA and Mount Sinai Medical center New York, USA. He worked with internationally renowned surgeons for Heart Transplant and Ventricular Assist Devices during his training period.
