Check your ‘heart risk score’ before your fave team scores

KOLKATA: It may just help to check your “cardiac risk score” before you settle down in front of your TV to soak in a month and more of World Cup excitement.

Men above 45 with a heart condition, high blood pressure and uncontrolled diabetes or those who smoke or have a family history of cardiac ailments have a score of above 1, which puts them in the risk category, say experts. Increased excitement (caused by a goal from your favourite team) or a spurt in stress level (triggered by a goal scored by the team you hate) is a recipe for heart attack for this group.

But that does not mean you switch off the TV or watch something more tepid, like the India-Afghanistan Test match, say doctors. Just don’t get too psyched up; and, in case you cannot handle a nerve-wracking encounter, take a break to calm your frayed nerves.

“Watching football can be life-threatening,” cardiac surgeon Kunal Sarkar agreed, explaining that excitement could trigger neuro-hormones, which would lead to a spike in heart rate and blood pressure. “The heart has to pump faster to meet this sudden spurt in cardiac activity, which could cause a cardiac arrest. Those with heart ailments or high blood pressure are especially vulnerable. My advice would be to restrain your excitement if you feel you can’t handle the stress,” Sarkar said.

High-profile sporting events like the Fifa World Cup lead to a rise in the number of sudden cardiac arrests. “Unlike cricket or golf, which are relatively passive sports, passions run high in football. There’s hardly any cooling-off period in the middle of a match and those rooting for a team tend to get involved. The sudden flow and ebb of hormones could be dangerous,” he said.

Before you tune in to a high-voltage match, get your basic health parameters screened, advised AMRI Hospital consultant Debashish Saha. “A significantly large number of those who will be watching the World Cup are undiagnosed cardiac patients. It is this section that can be caught unawares. A sudden flow of adrenalin could be harmful for those who have blocked arteries,” Saha said. A cardiac risk score of 1 and above puts you at moderate risk and those with a count of 3 and above fall in the high-risk group. “It is calculated on the extent of your cardiac complications, blood pressure, blood sugar count and genetic propensity. The majority of those with a count between 1 and 3 are not aware that they are at risk,” Saha pointed out.

Any excitement can trigger a sudden rise in catacolamin (adrenalin) levels in blood. Asudden adrenalin rush leads to high blood pressure and heart rate since the heart starts pumping faster. “It could be dangerous for the high-risk group as most don’t have regular check-ups,” Saha said. But the “healthy population” — those with normal body-mass index, no blood pressure, diabetes or family history of cardiac ailments and non-smokers — can remain unaffected by heightened stress, experts say.

All is not lost for those with a score of more than 1, though. “Periodic screening can help scale down the modifiable risk factors like blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol and smoking. This can bring down the risk factor and make you less vulnerable to football-triggered stress,” explained Saha.

It was not just watching a game that could raise your stress level, warned senior consultant Arindam Biswas. Even an animated discussion or a sudden argument in the middle of a match could be dangerous for the risk-group, he pointed out. “If you are a passionate football fan, avoid sudden outbursts of emotion like screaming after a goal. And never, never skip your medicines,” he said.

A FIFA World Cup or an IPL could be risky for the faint-hearted but it would not be fair to “blanket label” these events as risky, argued Hrishikesh Kumar, senior consultant at Institute of Neurosciences Kolkata. “Watching late-night matches could be risky, though. Lost sleep can lead to stress, depression and anxiety, which are a perfect recipe for a brain stroke. So check your cholesterol count and make sure that you get enough sleep, even if you have to miss Messi in action,” he advised.

SOURCE: TOI

Six-month-old swallows nail, back home after operation – AMRI HOSPITAL

KOLKATA: Three days ago, six-month-old Taufiq Mullik was rushed from Murshidabad to Kolkata with a nail stuck in his windpipe. On the eve of Eid, doctors removed the two-and-a-half-inch nail through a rigid bronchoscopy — a non-surgical procedure — and sent the baby home.
In the afternoon on June 13, Taufiq’s uncle Alauddin Shiekh heard him crying. He noticed froth around the baby’s mouth that had streaks of blood in it. Panicking, he immediately alerted other family members.

When they realized that something was stuck in Taufiq’s throat, his grandmother tried to extract the nail with her fingers. But she drove it deeper. The family then decided to take him to a hospital.

After alleged refusals by five hospitals, including four government set-ups, the boy was finally admitted in AMRI Hospital Mukundapur around 5pm on June 14, almost 36 hours after he swallowed the nail. “The child was coughing and was in great breathing distress. He was immediately wheeled into the operation theatre,” said Dr Bichitrabhanu Sarkar, paediatric intensivist at AMRI Mukundapur.

By then the nail had travelled down the trachea and was lodged in the right bronchus. Fortunately, it had not caused any significant perforation. “We extracted the nail using an endoscope through a procedure called rigid bronchoscopy. The most tricky issue was giving anaesthesia to an infant with a compromised airway,” said Dr Anindya Chattopadhyay, consultant paediatric surgeon.

Doctors said if the nail had stayed in longer, it could have caused death. Taufiq was kept in the PICU through the night. Though doctors wanted to keep him for another day, his parents wanted to go back home for Eid. Doctors agreed to discharge him on Friday after reviewing Taufiq’s param.

SOURCE: TOI

Do Graphic Warning Labels on cigarette packs make any difference?

When it comes to smoking, smokers often seem to have deaf ears. Whatever they are told or requested or warned, their habit of smoking seems really hard to pull off. However, since the rule to display graphical warnings on cigarette packets has been put into place, has there been any deterring behaviour? Have the visual warnings led to any per cent of demotivation in the smokers? Studies say yes.

In first-of-its-kind law in India, courts made it compulsory for cigarette brands to carry horrific visual graphic warning labels (GWLs) on cigarette packs. In fact, till today, over 65 countries carry such warnings because they have been proved to reduce smoking rates.

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death throughout the world, including India.

The idea was proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Mays and colleagues conducted a study to map the impact and biological mechanisms that explained why and how GWLs impacted smokers to think of the health consequences of smoking.

The team took 19 current smokers aged 18 to 30 and showed them a series of images that displayed two types of packaging. First, GWLs, consisting of a graphic and text or text-only warning labels. Second, plain cigarette packaging for four seconds each person.

The study mapped the brains of the participants through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Also, the participants had to record their willingness to quit ranging from 1 to 4 post the image viewing.

The study concluded that GWLs were much more successful at demotivating participants to smoke as compared to plain or even text-only warnings. GWLs demonstrated responses in various regions in the brain, including the amygdala and in the medial prefrontal cortex.

 "The medial prefrontal region that responded to graphic warning labels in this study has been previously associated with self-relevant processing... When we find information to be self-relevant, that may increase how impactful it is for our life decisions," co-lead study author Adam Green told a website.

 TOI Health team conducted a poll asking people if GWLs made any difference for them in their decision to buy a pack. We asked people if they would buy a cigarette pack despite the GWL on it. Of the total 3800 respondents, 54 per cent said no, while 46 per cent said yes, proving what the study had concluded.

 Smoking causes 90 per cent of the total lung cancer deaths in the world. It harms every organ in the body! It causes 80 per cent deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Kick the butt now or you won’t ever!

Source:TOI