Cardiologist Terms Healthy Life Style Essential For Prevention Of Heart Disease

Though a coronary stent helps preventing re-occurrence of artery closure, the sound heart requires maximum possible reduction in risk factors by adoption of positive lifestyle changes by the patients, said a cardiologist Dr. Muhammad Kashif Shaikh

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Nov, 2017 ) :Though a coronary stent helps preventing re-occurrence of artery closure, the sound heart requires maximum possible reduction in risk factors by adoption of positive lifestyle changes by the patients, said a cardiologist Dr.

Muhammad Kashif Shaikh.Talking to APP here on Wednesday Dr. Kashif Shaikh, Director Interventional Cardiology at Isra University Hospital Hyderabad, elaborated that the best way to keep a stent from relocking or the disease from progressing was having healthy diet, regular exercise, quit smoking, taking the medical therapy and drugs doctor prescribes and scheduling an annual check-up visit with cardiologist to stay on top of disease management.

Stent is a small mesh tube used to treat narrow or weak arteries which carry blood away from heart to other parts of body, he informed adding that Doctors may also place stents in weak arteries to improve blood flow and help prevent the arteries from bursting.

He further informed that some stents are coated with medicine that is slowly and continuously released into the artery. These stents are called drug-eluting stents having medicine embedded in it to help preventing the artery from closing in the long term.

He said that "Stent life" is a frequent concern for patients who write to us wondering how long a stent will last, and how to prolong the value of a stent. Cardiologist further informed about Stents that the standard technique of coronary angioplasty with stenting continues to require the initial step of dilatation and either acceptance of the end result if satisfactory.

He informed that the medicine-coated stents are used in people with coronary artery disease advanced (CAD), there is a higher risk of blood clots, heart attack and death. He informed that Intravascular or intracardiac Stenoses (narrowing of a passage in the body, occur in many forms of congenital heart disease (CHD) and the implantation of stents has become an accepted interventional procedure for stenotic lesions in pediatric cardiology.

He said that the era of coronary Stents, has matured and settled down as an accepted and a standard method of coronary revascularization with attractive advantages over coronary bypass surgery in selected cases.

Dr. Muhammad Kashif Shaikh informed that during the procedure of coronary angioplasty, narrowed or clogged heart arteries are opened with the help of hollow tubes and a metal wire.A small balloon is inflated by one of the tubes and the blockage in the artery wall is flattened and the procedure is almost always followed by the placement of a stent, which is basically a wire mesh tube.

The stent acts as scaffolding and prevents re-narrowing of the artery, he added. The recent studies suggest that there is a higher risk of blood clots forming in medicine-coated stents compared to bare metal stents and the food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that medicine-coated stents usually don't cause complications due to blood clots when used as recommended, Dr.

Muhammad Kashif informed. Compared to coronary artery bypass surgery, which is much more invasive, people who get stents have less discomfort and a shorter recovery time but stenting isn't risk-free.

A blood clot can form in one and cause arteries to narrow again suddenly, he warned. He said that in many cases, even when it is clear at the outset that a stent, would have to be placed, still, current operating procedure requires a pre-dilatation with a simple balloon followed by deployment of a balloon mounted stent.

He said that although Cardiac Stents can reduce the symptoms of coronary artery disease (CAD), it isn't a cure for CAD or the risk factors that led to it. Making healthy lifestyle changes can help treat CAD and maintain the good results from angioplasty, he maintained.