Detection Of Heart Disease Looking into your HEART

Preface

To say this is my book is not correct. I can only say that it was my desire. I found a lacuna in the books on heart disease, which had to be filled. While most of the existing books focus on prevention and reversal of heart disease, there is hardly any, on detection of heart disease.

Today, heart disease remains the No-1 killer worldwide. There are several tests for detection and each has its advantages and disadvantages, People are flooded with
Information-much of it insufficient and often misleading. For a layman, it may be almost impossible to discriminate what is real from what is hype. My job is to simplify ‘the complicated’ and to offer scientific information in a language you can understand.

Throughout the book, I have tried to cover al the contents in the form of answers to questions which my patients normally ask. I am consciously not giving any references; if I do, the list would exceed the contents of the book.

If I’ve done my job correctly, I will have helped you by providing you with everything you need to know about tests for heart disease detection and prevention, without having to spend hundreds of hours downloading from the Web, clipping the magazines or asking every friend you have.

Dr. V.J. Sadhana

A True Story

Experts from the ‘Welcome address’ made during the inaugural ceremony of Safe Health on 22nd May 2004.

There was this man from Pondicherry, India, aged 57 years. He was extremely lovable person, helpful to everyone and very religious. He had a high profile job, was financially stable and socially well settled. He was a non-smoker, consumed alcohol occasionally and enjoyed good food. He was concerned about his health and went for regular check-ups. He was neither a diabetic nor a hypertensive, had normal cholesterol levels and ECG/TMT were normal. In short he was ‘risk-free’ from heart disease.

He was happy and healthy. At least, that was what he thought…. Until one day on his 30th wedding anniversary he had a massive heart attack and did not live to see another day. That man was… My father and today happens to be his birthday.

My father also became just another ‘heart disease’ statistic!

He was one of the 50 million Indians who suffer from Coronary Heart Disease

He belonged to 50% of those for whom heart attack is the first symptom of heart disease

He belonged to 50% of those having heart attack, who die during the first attack.

What had happened? What went wrong? How could a person have normal BP and a normal ECG and then have a massive heart attack later? Had the doctors been negligent?
Did they make a mistake while reading the ECG? Or was the ECG itself wrong?

The answers to these questions are not very simple. The conventional diagnostic techniques like ECG, TMT, which failed to detect his heart disease have their own limitations and newer diagnostic procedures are either not available or nor utilized adequately.

My father had to wait for a heart attack to know that he had heart disease, but it was too late.