Alert: Majority of 40% severe ‘Heart attacks’ in State misdiagnosed due to lack of trained doctors

Hyderabad: A majority of 40% of patients in Telangana State suffering from severe cardiovascular disease die due to misdiagnosing by the doctors and instead are treated for muscle cramps, gastritis reveals a confidential state health department report.

The confidential report has been prepared for a pilot project which aims at dealing with STEMI (ST Elevated Myocardial Infraction) cases where the heart attack leads to complete blockage of one artery resulting in high death rate, a case which, if misdiagnosed, almost always leads to death.

According to the report, only 15% of patients with myocardial infraction reach the healthcare facility within the first 24 hours while 60% of them reach the second or the 3rd day while remaining patients arrive too late, TOI reports.

Of these patients about 40% are treated “as non-cardiac problems like gastritis, muscle cramps etc due to lack of proper diagnostic facilities and trained personnel. Thus, the mortality is very high among these cases,” the report states, adding how heart ailments top the charts with high death rates.

‘Several RMPs, PMPs often do not even know how to read an ECG’ says the report.

A patient with STEMI highly experiences mild to severe chest pain and at times only breathlessness where untrained professionals (registered medical practitioners (RMP) and private medical practitioners (PMPs)) cannot diagnose it accurately said doctors.

“Though trained doctors do not make this mistake, untrained professionals are prone to misinterpreting it as gastritis as the nerve that supplies blood to the chest also supplies blood to the abdomen,” said Dr G Srinivas Rao, director public health, Telangana.

In other words, healthcare facilities in the state have the presence of untrained RMPs and PMPs in the healthcare sector.

“There are lot of unqualified practitioners who add to the problem. The RMPs & PMPs who often do not even know how to read an ECG are running the show in rural areas. In fact, you can find many in Hyderabad as well,” said Dr A Sai Ravi Shanker, senior consultant cardiologist and former general secretary, Cardiology Society of India, Telangana.

Disclosing details of one of his patients, Dr Shanker said he received a STEMI patient on Monday, who was previously misdiagnosed as suffering from acidity.

Many Centres functioning in and around the State are Without Facilities is another problem the state needs to find a solution for.

The brutal fact remains fact that several of these centres either do not have all the required facilities to ascertain a STEMI case (ECG, ECHO, TROP T and angiogram) or do not have a heart specialist – a cardiologist for instance to read the reports only adds to the problem.

Cardiac diseases and heart attacks are being reported high in the state.

“As many as 26.93 lakh individuals above 30 years of age were screened under the non-communicable diseases programme conducted in 12 districts of the state. It was found that 2,66,358 were hypertensive, and 1,99,605 were diabetic. About 52,000 had both,” the internal report noted.