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New life saving mantra launched

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI APRIL 13. Statistics itself is enough to give you a heart attack. Each year over 25,000 people in Delhi alone die of heart attacks, 17,000 of them die before they reach the hospital and 12,000 of them can be revived if a by-stander simply does chest compressions with a speed of 60-100 per minutes.

And now to save a life you don't necessarily need to know the sophisticated techniques of opening the airway, mouth to mouth resuscitation and chest compression.

The Indian Medical Association, Delhi, has launched a new life saving mantra to reduce the incidence of heart attack related sudden death. The acclaimed revolutionized and simplified methodology of reviving the patients by giving only chest compressions may be as effective as a complete Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), say doctors.

Demonstrating the new techniques, Dr. A.K. Aggarwal, President IMA New Delhi branch and senior consultant Mool Chand Hospital, said the earlier technique involved mouth to mouth resuscitation faced reservation from most people, but the new technique could be taught at schools and colleges and also to the general public to make it much more effective.

Dr. Aggarwal was speaking in a Cardiology Update Symposium jointly organised by Mool Chand Hospital, IMA, Delhi branch, and IMA, New Delhi branch, in association with NDMC doctors.

Inaugurating the seminar President of Delhi Medical Association, S.C.L Gupta, said heart attacks in India were taking an epidemic shape. The medical association was facing an uphill task in tackling the disease as it is largely self-inflicted and most patients reach a doctor too late. The only answer then, according to him, was to create a public education system so that the patients are at least brought to a doctor on time.

Talking about heart attacks among the Indians with special reference to Indian doctors, Ashok Seth, Chief of intervention Cardiology at Escorts Heart Institute, said being an Indian was a risk factor and among professionals an Indian doctor was 17 times more prone to get a heart attack than an American doctor.

Dr. Sethi pointed out that the answer lay in understanding and modifying the risk factor. Quitting smoking, reducing abdominal obesity, controlling high blood pressure and high cholesterol were the key factors in reducing the incidence of heart attack among Indian executives. If not controlled, these factors combine together and increase the risk of attack by 10 times.

He added that daily exercise was the most inexpensive way to improve the health of the nation.

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