'3 in 1,000 get treated by angioplasty in India'

Three out of 1,000 patients with coronary heart diseases get treated with Percutaneous Coronary Intervention also called Angioplasty, says a survey by National Interventional Council (NIC) on Wednesday.

According to the survey, India will soon bear the largest burden of heart diseases globally with an estimate of over 61.5 million people suffering from coronary heart disease by the end of 2015.

"Even though there has been a rise in the number of cases, the growth rate of coronary interventions has gone down over the past two years from 22 percent in 2013 to 14 percent in 2014," said the report adding that stents used for heart treatment has also slowed down to 18 percent in 2014 from 22 percent in 2013.

"Due attention should be given to building infrastructure and providing support to the small centres, that need support in training and infra to grow further," said Praveen Chandra, Chairman, Cardiological Society of India.

Chandra, the chairman of the National Interventional Council(NIC) spoke at the launch of the report in the national capital.

The NIC survey also showed that only two percent of the total laboratories conduct more than 2,000 angioplasties per year.

He said that the most disappointing fact of the Indian medical industry was that "stenting" has not increased significantly despite being in the low-price, subsidized segment.

"This is mainly due to lack of attention to the other factors responsible for treatment delivery such as availability of highly skilled implanters and support staff, availability of advanced facilities like CathLabs for stenting procedure and lack of proper patient referral mechanism," Chandra added.