It was the morning of September 28 and for the family of a bread winner it was a day of despair and hopelessness. Their loved one had just suffered a massive heart attack and they had more or less given up hope.
Will he die? Even if he recovers, will he suffer severe disability?
Rushed to Ward 60 of the National Hospital of Colombo, the blood clot blocking his artery was found to be huge.
Ten minutes after the doctors headed by Consultant Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Gotabhaya Ranasinghe got activated, the ECG (Electrocardiogram) of the patient who was nearly dead earlier, was fine, indicating that his heart was back to normal. He was one lucky person, for the doctors reacted quickly and took the clot out through the most modern treatment for heart attacks – primary angioplasty.
An ECG measures and records the heart’s electrical activity. This latest robust treatment strategy saves lives and this is the good news that Dr. Ranasinghe is hoping to spread among the medical fraternity through his book, ‘Management of ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction’.
Mortality (death) and morbidity (disability) rates from heart attacks are quite high, explains Dr. Ranasinghe who has delved not only into global but also local statistics.
Globally cardiovascular disease which includes heart attacks is the No. 1 killer with 17.1 million deaths in 2005. Going through hospital statistics locally, Dr. Ranasinghe found that the number being felled by heart attacks was rising in the last 10 years, amounting to 16-20%. Three years ago, however, the death rate had dropped to 16%, a decline attributed to new treatment techniques.
Still, for Sri Lanka with a good health system, this mortality rate was significant. “There is a huge gap between us and the developed countries which have only an 8-10% mortality rate,” he says.
That is why Dr. Ranasinghe took it upon himself to devote time, a full seven months, amidst his busy schedule to write this book to make his colleagues, both Cardiologists and Physicians, aware about the major role that they can play in managing heart attacks with these new treatment options. The book has been published with his own funds.
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| Dr. Ranasinghe |
‘Management of ST-Segment Elevation Myoc-ardial Infarction’ was launched at the recent sessions of the Ceylon College of Physicians under its President Dr. Kamani Wanigasuriya.
Dr. Ranasinghe hopes to distribute the first 500 copies of this important book to all doctors, hospitals and libraries free of charge and have it in bookshops at a nominal price of Rs. 200. The sales collections will be channelled to the Sri Lanka Heart Association Trust Fund.
If there is a bigger demand, he hopes a sponsor will come forward as he will update this book every two years.
Conceding that primary angioplasty is an expensive procedure, he says patients can get funding from the President’s Fund, while hoping that it will be freely available in all state hospitals soon.
Dr. Ranasinghe, while stressing that heart attacks are a “curable problem”, urges doctors not to delay but to start treatment within the first hour of a patient being brought in. |
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