Uddhav might need one more angioplasty in the future: doctor On Friday morning, Shiv Sena executive president,

Uddhav Thackeray, 52, underwent a three-hour angioplasty procedure at Lilavati Hospital in Bandra to clear three blockages in his heart. In an angioplasty, a balloon is pushed into a blood vessel to flatten the blockage, leaving a stent to open the narrowed or blocked artery. Sources at the hospital said that during the angioplasty procedure, doctors diagnosed another insignificant blockage in his heart, which did not require immediate medical attention. He might require another angioplasty procedure for the blockage in the future, said a doctor from the hospital. Both the left and right arteries had a 100% blockage each. Two stents were placed in each of these blocked regions to open the blocked arteries, said a member of the team of doctors that attended to Thackeray. A fifth stent was placed to clear the third blockage in the left artery. There is no cap on the number of stents that a doctor can insert. However, each stent has its own re-blocking rate depending on its length and size. Multiple stenting can lead to thrombosis (blood clot formation in the vessel), said Dr Hasmukh Ravat, senior cardiologist, Fortis Hospital, Mulund. Dr Ravat added that if too many long stents are placed, performing a bypass surgery in the future is difficult. After the procedure, Thackeray was shifted to the intensive care unit (ICU) on the sixth floor of the hospital. He is likely to get a discharge on Sunday. Dr Matthew who performed the angioplasty procedure said he was stable and recuperating in the ICU. A team of doctors including cardiologist Dr Ajit Menon, Dr Matthew Samuel Kalarickal and Dr Ajit Desai, intensivists Dr Prakash Jindania and Dr Samad Ansari and cardiac surgeon Om Prakash Jaiswal along with Dr Jalil Parkar attended to him.

Health check: GenNext quite prone to heart ailments When Siv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, who underwent an angiography at a city hospital on Tuesday after experiencing chest pain, it turned the spotlight on a question that few of us bother to ask what is the right age to start looking after your heart? Notwithstanding his youthful looks, Thackeray at 52 is in an age group where most people begin to think about their cardiac health. But city doctors say much younger patients have started coming to them with heart-related ailments. And in a country where people are genetically predisposed to heart disease, this is definitely a worrying trend. Take the case of Samarth Talpade, who was raring to take on the world until three months

ago, when a minor heart attack caught him unawares. This youngster from Santa Cruz in no way fit the bill of a textbook cardiac patient, who is usually a smoker with a family history of heart disease and an unhealthy lifestyle. Yet, in March this year, 25-year-old Talpade woke up with an uneasy feeling. I dismissed the sudden throbbing sensation in my shoulder as muscular pain. But the pain went shooting downwards to the pit of my stomach so badly that I was not able to either sit or rest. I was gripped by the fear that I may have had a heart attack. I couldnt believe that this could happen to someone my age, recalls Talpade. For a person close to six feet tall, Talpade was tipping the scales at 96kg in March this year. After doctors assured Talpade that the clogged artery will dissolve with exercise, diet control and medication, he has lost more than 10kg to avoid another scare. I had nightmares that I would have to start slowing down at 25. I started worrying about things like climbing the stairs at railway stations or sitting in a rollercoaster at an amusement park, says Talpade. Even as younger patients are complaining of heart issues, in close to 10% of all cases, the exact cause of a heart attack might not be traced. Occasionally, we get patients without conventional risk factors like abnormal cholesterol values or obesity, which are some of the reasons for an arterial blockage. Indians are genetically more prone to suffer from heart ailments at the most productive time of their lives between 30 and 50 years of age as compared to people in the West, says Dr Ashish Contractor, head, preventive and cardiac rehabilitation at the Asian Heart Insitute in Bandra. Every month, at least two patients below the age of 30 are operated on for heart ailments at the state-run JJ hospital. Of 60 surgeries undertaken in a month at the cardiovascular thoracic department of the hospital, 10-12 patients range between 35 and 40 years of age. Since the past one year, the average age of patients advised to undergo an angiography to detect a possible blockage has gone down from 45 to 35 years of age. Apart from conventional risk factors, rapidly increasing stress and anxiety among youngsters is an attributable cause, said a senior cardiac surgeon from the JJ Group of Hospitals. Rajnish Rathore, a Navi Mumbai techie working with a leading telecom company was barely 35 when he suffered a heart attack. He was on his way to office in September 2008 when he felt a throbbing pain in his chest. I drove to MGM hospital in Vashi and collapsed in the OPD. My reports threw up three arterial blockages, one being close to 99% blocked. The rest were blocked up to 90%, says Rathore, who underwent an angioplasty to decongest his left artery which was jammed with more than 99% plaque. The human heart has a mind of its own and it should not be tampered with. I loved someone for 17 desperate years and in return she gave me three blocked arteries, jokes

Rathore, pointing at the four cigarettes he had bought just a day prior to the massive heart attack. I present these cigarettes to friends who have not heeded my advice and continue to smoke. In addition to conventional risk factors, experts are now in the process of identifying certain biological factors that make Indians more susceptible to heart disease. Lack of certain enzymes like homocystein, which aid the cell-building process, may aggravate heart trouble. Also, the effects of C-reactive protein, lipoprotein presence and triglyceride levels in the body on the heart are being probed into, says Dr Hasmukh Ravat, interventional cardiologist at Fortis hospital in Mulund. Last years annual cause-of-death data released by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations health department revealed that 26,450 Mumbaikars had succumbed to heart attacks in 2011, a figure that has gone up by 1.5% since 2010. A recent paper published in the British Heart Journal has made a startling revelation. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common non-infectious disease in India, and is likely to affect over 65 million Indians by 2015. The overall prevalence of CAD in India has risen dramatically over the last two decades. Approximately 3-4% of Indians in rural areas and 8-10% in the urban areas suffer from CAD. Moreover, Indians are more likely to develop CAD during their working years. Among working-age adults (35-64), nearly 18 million productive years of life are expected to be lost to CAD by 2030, says the study. This number is over nine times higher than expected deaths in the US. However, young survivors of heart attacks are not letting their hearts take over their heads. Instead of undergoing further surgeries, Rathore chose to strengthen his body by exercise and medication. At the young age of 35, heart muscles can be rebuilt with regular exercise. These act as a natural bypass for blocked arteries, the doctors told me. Since then, I make it a point to climb and descend a hill in my vicinity every week. Apart from quitting cigarettes altogether, I have been running the citys half marathon since the past two years with a record of covering 21 kilometres in less than three hours, says a hale and hearty Rathore, beaming proudly