Heart attacks and cardiac deaths are increasingly on rise in young in the age group of 40-50. Stress, sedentary lifestyle and poor dietary choices are affecting cardiac health of people in general and experts advise screening after the age of 40 to reduce risk of heart ailments and sudden deaths.

“It seems KK was having some chest discomfort and he was rushed to the hotel. Now simply if somebody starts having chest discomfort which is a suspicion for heart attack, then the patient should not be running. Patient should be taken to a place where he is lying down. So that heartbeat comes down rather than creating lot of anxiety around the situation. When people start running, it will make situation worse. If emergency situation like this is suspected, make the patient comfortable, then if there is availability of simple aspirin or sorbitrate, then try that. Potentially one should know BP of the person who is at risk, saturation if one can know. Patient should be taken to a hospital in comfortable manner and not in a rushed manner like it was shown in the video how KK was rushed back to hotel and then to hospital and in that duration all these things happened,” says Dr Kapoor.

“When somebody says a person has a healthy lifestyle, so that healthy lifestyle could be looking from outside. But what actually is inside is a vascular lifestyle. Blood vessels may not be behaving in a good manner even if the person is leading a healthy lifestyle from outside. The person might be gymming, maybe going for walks maybe jogging, but if the person is smoking in addition to this, then a person cannot have a healthy lifestyle. Or if a person is stressed in addition to this then we can’t say the person has a healthy lifestyle. All the good things that the person is doing is nullified by the bad things and these bad things are leading to a lot of stress from the heart point of view which can be life threatening,” he says.

Dr Kapoor says prevention is the best thing we can do. “One should screen themselves beyond the age of 40. They should have cardiac annual check-ups, fasting blood sugar, fasting cholesterol, fasting lipid profiles and other blood tests and a good stress test. This creates a comprehensive screening test and if there is some clue, some pointer that comes out of this screening test that is not normal then people can have advanced testing in the form of CT corner scans, conventional angiography. We should exactly know what’s happening with arteries of our heart. BP and cholesterol issues should be addressed too because they also cause heart problems,” concludes the expert.