Hypertension and cardiovascular diseases-Silent and vicious correlation: Dr Sushil

STATE TIMES NEWS

JAMMU: To commemorate World Hypertension Day (which is celebrated every year on 17th May) Head Department of Cardiology GMCH Jammu Dr. Sushil Sharma held a day long cardiac awareness cum health check up camp at Kashyap Sabha, Ram Lila Chowk, Nai Basti Jammu.
More than 300 people were screened, diagnosed, evaluated and free medicine were also given as per the requirements.
While interacting with the people, Dr Sushil stated that Hypertension is one of the most prevalent pathologies affecting approximately one in three adults. Of these patients diagnosed with hypertension, only 54% have adequate blood pressure control. The global prevalence of hypertension is 26.4% which accounts for 1.1 billion people, yet only one in five people have adequately managed blood pressure. One study found that prolonged hypertension eventually leads to heart failure with a median time of 14.1 years.
He elaborated that High blood pressure (BP), smoking, diabetes mellitus, and lipid abnormalities are major modifiable risk factors for Cardiovascular Disease (CVD).
Among these, high BP is associated with the strongest evidence for causation and has a high prevalence of exposure. However, there is considerable evidence that a biologically normal level of BP in humans is considerably lower than what has been traditionally employed in clinical practice and research, leading to an underrepresentation of the role that BP plays as a risk factor for CVD. Short term consequences like Stroke, Coronary heart disease, Heart failure and Cardiovascular death, Long-term consequences are Hypertensive cardiomyopathy, Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, Atrial fibrillation, Valvular heart disease, Aortic syndromes, Peripheral arterial disease and Chronic kidney disease.
He added that Hypertension ranks as the most prevalent modifiable risk factor for premature cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular mortality and requires constant surveillance to identifying complications and slow their development. Prolonged hypertension promotes left ventricular hypertrophy which will eventually lead to heart failure (both systolic and diastolic). Eccentric hypertrophy leads to increased oxygen demand by the myocardium which can result in angina or ischemic symptoms.
Hypertrophy of the muscle can disrupt conduction pathways predisposing to atrial fibrillation which leads to ischemic stroke, he said.
Chairman DDC Jammu Bharat Bhushan and S.P Verma ( Padma Shri) also graced the occasion and appreciated efforts of Dr Sushil, his team and members of Kashyap Sabha for conducting camp and taking this noble mission to help people of Jammu and building awareness about cardiovascular diseases
In his concluding remarks, Dr. Sushil Sharma told that regardless of its exact contribution, high BP is a major risk factor for development of CVD. Prevention of the age-related increase in BP would substantially reduce the vascular consequences usually attributed to aging. It is time to focus greater attention on initiatives for prevention of the typical age-related increase in BP in addition to control of high BP in those with established hypertension. Even partial improvement in the age-related increase in BP would eliminate a large proportion of the existing burden of BP-related CVD.
Management Committee of Kashyap Sabha (Jheewer Biradari) Gurpreet Dogra, Ajay Dogra, Narender Kumar, Rakesh Kumar, Parveen Kumar, Naresh Kumar , Vinay kumar thanked Dr Sushil and his team for accepting their request to conduct camp in their vicinity.
Others who were part of this camp includes Dr Nasir Ali Choudhary, Dr Yashwant Sharma and Dr Parvinder Kour. Paramedics and volunteers includes Raghav Rajput, Ranjeet Thakur, Rajkumar, Lovely Malpotra, Jatin Bhasin, Rajinder Singh, Aman Gupta, Gourav Sharma , Vikas Kumar and Sunny Sharma.