Every day in Cordoba, someone suffers a heart attack. He Queen Sofia Hospital Last year, he treated an average of 600 cases of patients who suffered cardiac arrest or failure, more than half of whom triggered the “Heart Attack Code” in require urgent intervention in the operating room. “Time is muscle, the more we wait, the more muscle we lose,” admitted Manuel Pan, director of the cardiology department at the Reina Sofía University Hospital, to ABC during the celebration of World Heart Day .
The Reina Sofía Hospital provides 27,000 annual consultations for cardiovascular diseases, highlighting the Health Delegate, María Jesús Botella in the presentation with the Cardiology department and associations of patients suffering from heart diseases or transplant recipients during a day of awareness and prevention activities for these pathologies in the hall of the hospital center.
Botella recalled that the cardiology unit at the Reina Sofía University Hospital provides around 27,000 consultations per year for patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases, an increasing number due to the aging of the population. This group of pathologies is responsible for nearly 5,600 catheterizations which are carried out annually in the hemodynamic rooms of the hospital center. Among them, 350 are urgent, acute, due to the heart damage caused by myocardial infarction as well as heart failure. This is what cardiologists and the Association of Cardiac Patients of Cordoba and the Heart Failure and Transplant Association on the occasion of World Heart Day which, like every year, is commemorated on September 29.
The director of the hospital, Francisco Trivino recalled that the health impact of heart disease care in our hospital – more than 27,000 consultations directly linked to cardiovascular problems – “but it is in our hands to reduce these figures, by raising awareness in society of the importance of preventionhealthy habits and control of risk parameters such as cholesterol or diabetes.
For his part, the head of the Cardiology Service Manuel Pan, professor of Cardiovascular Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine of Córdoba, indicated that “we carry out approximately 350 urgent catheterizations per year, which are due to the activation of the ‘Infarction Code’ ; It’s the acute heart attack in which you have to run and in which closes a patient’s artery and it must be opened within a maximum of 2 to 4 hours maximum, it’s the classic heart attack.
In this sense, Pan explained that in this context “there are then situations like angina which motivate different catheterizations, which are attacks but gentler and allow more time, but fundamentally those in emergencies are the ones that save the most patient lives. Regarding the profile of these patients, Pan recognized that what has increased is the age. “Cardiovascular diseases are not the leading cause of death, I believe that cancer is beyond us,” declared the head of the cardiology department, who admitted that he did not know the reasons but that on the one hand it is prevention that is done. which is aggressive against cholesterol and other factors but especially for emergency treatments.
Pan said the “Heart Attack Code” is the most life-saving response, followed by the installation of percutaneous valves in the elderly, which showed a significant reduction. And also pharmacological advances in third position.
Regarding the profile of people suffering from a heart attack, the head of the cardiology department of the Cordoba hospital admitted that they consult both young and elderly people, but especially men, who are in the majority compared to Women’s. In this sense, he emphasized that “with the aging of the population, those we treat are increasingly older and suffer from heart diseases, because before, we did not really use these techniques with them, but rather used conservative treatment, but now we are more interventionist. ” ; “The population is aging and that is also good news.”
The most secret heart attacks in women
“Men are more likely to suffer a heart attack, but this does not mean that heart disease in women has peculiarities such as they diagnose worse and they are not arriving as soon as possible, and we are trying to improve the care,” explained cardiologist Pan.
The survival of these people who fall into the “Code Heart Attack” is improving more and more, explained the head of the cardiology unit and “it depends on the state in which they arrive, there are situations which are catastrophic with very serious heart attacks or which arrive very late, and this is the cardiogenic shock which does not exceed 50 percent survival, but the rest, since survival is practically 99 percent.
Comorbidity that increases risk
Another factor, according to Pan, is the patient’s age and comorbidity: “many patients are very fragile because they also have kidney or lung damage or other pathologies, so they have much less survival. Now it got better ventricular dysfunction What remains depends many times on the reaction time.
Botella also praised the work of cardiac rehabilitation complementary to pharmacological therapy, addressing the physical sphere, the control of risk factors and psychological factors. Around 250 people passed through this unit rehabilitation cardiac in 2023. The idea is to extend this cardiac rehabilitation to the rest of the provincial hospitals like in Pozoblanco, Infanta Marguerite and in Montilla this is already underway and “we will work to reach all corners of the province and ensure accessibility to these programs.”
This Friday, the day opened with a block of workshops on prevention and control (LDL cholesterol levels, blood sugar, blood pressure or risk factors) and a cardiomarathon by the Provincial Association of Civil Protection and Emergencies Volunteers of Cordoba (Asoprotecor).
