KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians should pay more attention to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) as it causes more deaths than cancer or AIDS.
National Heart Institute (IJN) Consultant Cardiologist Dr Razali Omar said the total number of patients who suffered SCA was twice higher than lung cancer and three times higher than Aids and breast cancer.
He said the people who were at higher risk for SCA were those who had had a heart attack, heart failure patients, survivors of a previous SCA or those who had a family member who had had an SCA event and people with low ejection fraction (EF).
“People talk a lot about AIDS, a lot about breast cancer.
“Of course, it is important but nobody talks about sudden death.
“When coronary artery disease is the second killer in Malaysia, therefore if a lot of people get heart attack in this country surely sudden death will follow very closely,” he said.
“Therefore, it is important to encourage people to learn CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) technique because it could help in saving people who have SCA,” Dr Razali told reporters after attending the “Patients Support Forum -”Restoring the Rhythm of Life” here yesterday.
It was held as the IJN, IJN Foundation and Medtronic celebrated the fifteenth year of implantable-cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implants in Malaysia.
Dr Razali said the heart institute, which pioneered the ICD treatment in 1996, had implanted a total of 853 ICDs that led to better quality of life to patients suffering irregular heart rhythm.
He said through the ICD, patients could treat and prevent sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) or sudden death that has become the number one killer across developed countries.
ICD is a heart device that is implanted under the skin which delivers therapies to treat fast, irregular or slow heart rhythms.
It is designed to monitor the heart rhythm 24 hours a day where if the heart is beating too fast, the device will first send small painless signals to correct the heart rate. — Bernama