Eminent cardiologists speak at Pulse 2020

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

Dietary practices are a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes in Pakistan because health practitioners have difficulty translating international recommendations according to local diet. In the absence of any national data on dietary consumption, health practitioners are unaware of what people are consuming. 

There is a need for an operational policy and an action plan to promote healthy eating and active lifestyle, the speakers noted at the First Cardiovascular Conference ‘Pulse 2020’ held at Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi. 

Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death in Pakistan, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017, and the country has committed to reducing the burden of such diseases by a third by 2030 under goal 3 of the sustainable development goals. 

The experts at the three-day conference stressed that the epidemic poses many challenges in the country due to the high cost of diagnosis and treatment and lack of prevention knowledge among patients. 

“Health is a partnership between a patient and his/her doctor, so empowerment has to happen from both ends. Right choices in dietary practices need to be picked by patients and advised by health professionals,” Dr Saira Bukhari, an assistant professor of cardiology in the department of medicine, remarked. 

There have been well-designed studies in the last few years which have found that diets which are inclined towards one set of nutrients as opposed to others don’t work and do more harm than good. 

“Such dietary practices are in contradiction to how the human body functions. It is all about having a diet of moderation,” Dr Romaina Iqbal, associate professor and section head for non-communicable diseases, NCDs, in the department of community health sciences at the AKU, added. 

Dr Romaina Iqbal recommended eating a balanced diet composed of complex carbohydrates, a variety of nutrients along with 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical exercise for adults of all ages. 

The speakers noted that numerous dietary plans catch media’s attention and people adopt them. The experts stressed that health practitioners need to introduce the language of prevention with patients. 

The knowledge of symptoms of cardiovascular diseases such as chest pain, shortage of breath, unusual heart beat and loss of consciousness are some of the indicators that patients should be informed about. 

Dr Saira Bukhari said that ideas promoting stereotypical notions of age and health such as how cholesterol and blood pressure numbers should be at a particular age should be discouraged. 

“Patients need to be enabled to make informed choices of their health because every delayed intervention increases the chance of heart attacks and even stroke,” she added. 

The keynote speaker, Dr Faiez Zannad, a cardiologist and clinical pharmacologist at Université de Lorraine in France, reckoned that the global progress in treating heart failure has been spectacular in the last 25 years with mortality declining three fold in dedicated clinical trials, pointing out that evidence from global clinical trials show income inequality as a factor determining clinical outcomes in heart failure. 

“It is desirable that patients and investigators from Pakistan get involved in global trials and join the efforts of knowledge production,” he said. 

Two other keynote speakers who spoke at the conference included Dr Jospeh Kisslo, professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center and Eric Velazquez, professor of medicine at Yale University. 

The conference was held in collaboration between AKU’s section of cardiology and department of medicine, the Association of Pakistani-descent Cardiologists of North America, the Pakistan Hypertension League and the Pakistan Aspirin Foundation. The event was attended cardiologists, postgraduate students, nurses, nutritionists and other healthcare professionals.