A lead­ing car­di­ol­o­gist is con­cerned about a trou­bling trend. Gen­er­al and in­ter­ven­tion­al car­di­ol­o­gist Dr Ravi Ram­lal said an in­creas­ing num­ber of young adults are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing car­diac-re­lat­ed prob­lems.

“The dis­ease process still hap­pens in the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion, it still hap­pen­ing. None the less at a high num­ber as well but there is a def­i­nite shift,” he said.

Dr Ram­lal said da­ta from re­search con­duct­ed in 2014 showed that men gen­er­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced their first heart at­tack at age 42 and women at 45.

He said at that time, those ages were con­sid­ered a cause for con­cern. How­ev­er, there is a wor­ry­ing new trend.

In an in­ter­view at the Ad­vanced Car­dio­vas­cu­lar In­sti­tute at West Shore Med­ical Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, Dr Ram­lal said: “I’ve been see­ing more and more young peo­ple, ac­tu­al­ly be­low the age of 40. The youngest I men­tioned was a 22-year-old that I had to look af­ter. In re­cent times I’m see­ing mid-30s, par­tic­u­lar­ly young men, com­ing in for treat­ment.”

Dr Ram­lal ex­plained that risk fac­tors such as obe­si­ty, high blood pres­sure, high cho­les­terol and smok­ing cause re­duced blood flow to the heart. He added that peo­ple could al­so be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing heart-re­lat­ed con­di­tions in re­cent years due to the ef­fects of the COVID-19 virus. 

“What we’ve no­ticed in the last cou­ple of years, in the pan­dem­ic there has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­flam­ma­to­ry re­sponse. It is ba­si­cal­ly like a storm that hap­pens in the body that leads to a dis­rup­tion in cho­les­terol build up in the brain and the heart that then leads to a po­ten­tial in­crease in risks for heart at­tacks,”  he said.

World Heart Day is ob­served on Sep­tem­ber 29 every year.

Not­ing that the fi­nan­cial fall­out from heart dis­ease is far-reach­ing, Dr Ram­lal added: “Glob­al­ly those pa­tients who have heart dis­ease put a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den on health care sys­tems. When you go to­wards the in­di­vid­ual cost, it can be ex­po­nen­tial in try­ing to treat heart dis­ease be­cause you have to not on­ly wor­ry about the med­ica­tion but al­so the surgery, get­ting blood flow back and tak­ing care of the com­pli­ca­tions of it how­ev­er it is all man­age­able.”

He ap­pealed to peo­ple be­yond those in the at-risk pop­u­la­tion to take the nec­es­sary ac­tions to pre­serve their heart health.

“Know your num­bers. Those num­bers are for high blood pres­sure. If you no­tice that your blood pres­sure is 140/90 per­sis­tent­ly then you know it is some­thing you have to bring down. The oth­er num­ber is HbA1C and is re­lat­ed to di­a­betes, it is a se­cu­ri­ty guard in your body, it is a mark­er we use to see how well your sug­ar lev­els are con­trolled.

“The next num­ber in terms of risk fac­tor is the one re­lat­ed to cho­les­terol and cho­les­terol build-up, you need to know your num­bers,” he said.

World Heart Day was ob­served on Sep­tem­ber 29. This year’s theme, Use Heart for Ac­tion, en­cour­ages in­di­vid­u­als to pri­ori­tise heart health.