Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 22: Putting the accent on golden hour as a window of opportunity that impacts a patient’s survival and quality of life following a heart attack, Dr. Sushil Sharma, HoD Cardiology GMC Jammu today exhorted general populace to take appropriate action within 60 minutes of heart attack to expect near-complete recovery.
“This concept is extremely significant to understand because most deaths and cardiac arrests happen during this period. It is a critical time and time is a muscle. This is because the heart muscle starts to die within 80-90 minutes after it stops getting blood, and within six hours, almost all the affected parts of the heart could be irreversibly damaged. So, the faster normal blood flow is re-established, the lesser would be the damage to the heart,” he informed.
Dr Sharma said to reduce the damage, it is important to get to the hospital as soon as possible. “Other then the consequences of a damaged heart muscle, the most common killer in the early period are abnormal heart rhythms called ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation where the heart muscles contract at a rapid rate, but no effective pumping of blood from the heart takes place. The best time to treat a heart attack is within one hour of the onset of the first symptoms including chest pain or discomfort in the centre of the chest, heaviness, tightness, pressure, aching, burning, numbness, fullness or squeezing feeling that lasts for more than a few minutes or goes away and comes back, pain or discomfort in other areas of the upper body including the arms, left shoulder, back, neck, jaw, or stomach, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, rapid or irregular heartbeats etc,” he added.
Among others who were part of this outreach programme include Dr. Nasir Ali Choudhary (Cardiologist), Dr. Dhaneshwar Kapoor and Dr Raman Dev Vikas. Paramedics and volunteers include Kamal Kishore, Gourav Heera, Mohd Altaf, Vikas Kumar, Lovely Kumar, Akshay Kumar, Aman Gupta, Mukesh Sharma, Rajinder Singh, Maninder Singh, Anmol Singh, Vikas Sabharwal and Suresh Raina.
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