MUMBAI: When 18-year-old Kumar’s (not his real name) parents took him to the emergency room of a Malad hospital with complaints of chest pain and mild sweating, they were unprepared for the diagnosis: Heart attack.
Their son was athletic, played cricket every day and none of their near relatives had had a heart attack. But the ECG reading, the 2-D echo scans and elevated levels of enzymes pointed to such an emergency that Kumar needed a stent in his left anterior descending (LAD) artery.
He isn’t the only teen to get a heart attack. Research data has shown Indians get heart attacks a decade before Caucasians but the age of onset of heart disease seems to be falling, say doctors.
“Kumar should be seen as a success story because he got quick treatment as compared to the other children in Indore and Jaipur,” said cardiologist Dr Abhishek Wadkar from Criticare Asia Hospital in Malad who treated the teenager. The doctor found 80% blockage in Kumar’s LAD after removing a huge clot. “The patient experienced immediate on-table relief from chest pain after the stent was placed at the site of blockage,” he said. The doctor found Kumar consumed junk food almost daily, resulting in elevated cholesterol levels. “He will need cardiac rehabilitation for a few months before returning to normal activities,” said the doctor.
Dr Wadkar said the age of onset of heart attack has sharply reduced in recent times. “When I was a student, we would be surprised if we found 30-year-olds among the patients, but now we regularly find people in their late twenties with heart disease,” he said.
It was believed the Covid vaccination played a role in triggering premature heart attacks among Indians, but findings of an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study in November 2023 negated this theory. It blamed the Covid virus, which is known to predispose a patient to thrombotic (formation of blood clots in veins and arteries) as well as lifestyle reasons.
Senior cardiologist Dr Brian Pinto said “there is definitively a post-Covid effect at work” in youths suffering heart attacks. “If the same patient has increased levels of stress or poor sleep, then the risk is higher,” said Dr Pinto.
Dr Ajay Mahajan, who heads the cardiology department of KEM Hospital in Parel, said whenever a young patient comes in with chest pain nowadays, one has to suspect a clot (against the usual cause of plaque buildup). “Not all young people need a stent as they do well with clot-busters,” he said, adding one should also suspect hyperhomocysteinemia (buildup of an amino acid called homocysteine that damages artery lining).