Hyderabad: Heart disease is the number one cause of mortality and a silent epidemic among Indians, according to the Indian Heart Association. Public health estimates indicate that India accounts for approximately 60% of the world’s heart disease burden, despite having less than 20% of the world’s population.
So, as humanity commemorates ‘World Heart Day’ on September 29, Practo, India’s leading integrated healthcare company conducted a deep dive into India’s heart health trends and witnessed a 200% increase in queries related to heart attacks in the last three months.
Reports of the demise of many well-known personalities due to heart-related issues, in the last two years, have impacted the awareness around heart health. It has spiked caution, especially among the urban populations living in metro cities. This is reflected in Practo’s Insights wherein Tier 1 cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune, received 75% of the queries on heart attacks, while 25% came from tier 2 cities.
In addition to the queries on heart attacks, queries on hypertension have witnessed a significant increase of 60% in the last three months. While 92% of these queries came from tier 1 cities, only 7% of them originated from tier 2 cities. This could be due to the lack of awareness around heart health in the smaller towns and villages. Apart from that there was also a 36% increase in queries on peripheral arterial disease.
As more people seek medical intervention concerning heart health, here are some other insights that stood out in our study (YoY comparison of the last three months):
- 56% of the consultations came from the age group of 30-39 years
- From these, 75% came from men and 25% came from women
- And 8% of patients who consulted with cardiologists on Practo were likely infected by Covid-19 in the past
- This only goes to show how heart health is not necessarily related to age and has become a lifestyle-related issue with Covid-19 being one of its trigger points.
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