Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA), which kills more people than lung cancer, breast cancer and AIDS combined in America, is yet to have an inventory in India, cardiologists today said at a summit here.
The SCA has become a major health hazard, they said on the concluding day of the two-day Jaipur Heart Rhythm Summit, where about 400 leading physicians from Rajasthan participated.
Of the 4,50,000 Americans who suffer from SCA each year, an estimated 95 per cent die before reaching the hospital, Anoop Gupta and Shomu Bohara, experts on the subject, said.
The SCA is a sudden, abrupt loss of heart function, and most SCA episodes are caused by the rapid and/or chaotic activity of heart known as ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF), Gupta said.
"These are diseases of the heart's electrical conduction system that should not be confused with a heart attack (myocardial infarction) which is caused by a blocked blood vessel leading to loss of blood supply to a portion of the heart muscle. However, some people may experience SCA during a heart attack," Gupta said.
"In India, such incidents of SCA do occur, but most of the times at home or at work, and patients are not getting registered with the hospital for the particular disease," Jitendra Singh Makkar, a consultant cardiologist and electro-physiologist, said.
The main objective of the summit was to create awareness about the different rhythm problems and help physicians to make timely diagnosis thereby offering optimum medical treatment, Makkar said.
