A recent study of almost 21,000 heart patients across India established that Indians not only “have a higher rate of serious cardiovascular diseases at a younger age” but also are “less likely to receive medical attention in time compared to developed countries”.

The study, titled CREATE, conducted by team of researchers led by Denis Xavier of St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore and Professor Salim Yusuf of McMaster University, Canada, appeared recently in The Lancet.

The two main reasons cited were lack of insurance coverage which prevents people from getting preventive health check-ups and the time taken to reach a hospital.

“The concept of health check-ups does not exist in the Indian community,” said Dr Sampat Kumar, head of Cardiothoracic and Neurosciences Department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. “Neither schools nor employers, insist on a health check up prior to admission or employment. Without mandatory health check-ups it is difficult to change the figures in India’s favour.”

The researchers gathered data from 20,468 coronary patients admitted to 89 hospitals spread over 50 cities. They found that of 20,468 patients given a definite diagnosis, 60 per cent showed evidence of a heart attack, compared with 40 per cent in developing countries.

With an average age of 60, these Indian patients were also younger by three to six years than their counterparts in richer nations.

The startling find was that the use of tobacco, high levels of lipids in the blood due to diets rich in saturated fat, and hypertension among Indians were the same as elsewhere in the world.

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