I am indeed delighted to address the Indian Association of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons at the 49th Annual Conference. My greetings to all the members who are attending the conference.

Cardiology and the Task

I realise that I am seeing you heart surgeons in front of me who care for a good, efficient and healthy heart. You are all working on a big mission of removing the pain of human beings particularly of their hearts. The nation is grateful to you for the significant contributions you are making in India where the fourth largest number of heart surgeries in the world are conducted. I understand that more than 50,000 heart surgeries are performed every year in our country. Also it is reported that India has the highest number of persons suffering from heart diseases. Why? Is it due to genetic defect, improper food habits or indifference to health awareness? Hence the mission of the conference has to be directed towards reaching the maximum number of persons to provide the best possible cardiac healthcare in a cost effective manner with surgeon's heart with love. It indicates that the large amount of work our heart surgeon community are doing and will be performing. Yet there is a most important mission that is bigger than the specialist gathering here and bigger than even a nation: Bringing down heart ailments, heart defects through proper preventive methods, evolving preventive technology such as early diagnostic tool, training for stress free life and above all doing research to learn from a few rural areas and hilly regions where minimum heart ailments are reported. With this background I am confident that this conference will open new avenues to provide better cardiac healthcare in our country.

Heart Surgeon as a Guru

Since every one of you are involved in cardiac surgery for removal of the defect and the pain of the heart patient, you can also play a vital role in preventing heart diseases through proper health education to the patient as well as to his or her relatives and friends through the life style intervention. This can consist of a proper diet with low fat and high fibre, regular aerobic exercise like walking and stress management through Yoga, meditation and other methods. This can help in preventing the recurrence of the disease in the heart patient as well as promote preventive cardiology at the national level. When you perform the heart surgery opening the chest, the patient becomes part and parcel of you the surgeons and considers you almost as God. Hence, the patient will definitely accept your health education considering you as the most respected guru. Every patient receives his family members, relatives and friends when he is receiving healthcare in the hospital. That is the occasion when the heart surgeons can give this message of a healthy life style to all of them. If you do this I can foresee that the incidence of heart disease requiring surgical intervention will come down and also the quality of life of the heart patients will improve.

Heart, Technology and Traditional Knowledge

I am glad to note some recent advancement in heart surgery. I inaugurated a modern facility of cath-lab set at CARE Foundation, Hyderabad in collaboration with Alpha-Tech industry where more than 50 surgeries have been successfully completed. Similar facilities need to be created in large number even in rural areas. I also inaugurated and witnessed another important achievement of performing a robotic surgery in heart patient at Escorts Heart Foundation at Delhi. I am not an expert in the field and I am conscious that I am talking to the experts. However, I can tell you that I have seen the remedies you people give most of the time to heart patients. These are either angioplasty after angiography, positioning the cardiac stent in coronoary artery or performing a by-pass surgery whenever required. I have come across some cases where the heart diseases recur sometimes after the heart surgery. When I was the Chief of the Defence R&D organization I had the opportunity of doing a study on 500 heart patients who showed significant improvement after life style intervention including low fat high fibre diet, regular aerobic exercise and meditation. It clearly indicates the importance of life style intervention in cardiac healthcare.

Concluding remarks

I am happy to interact with heart specialists and pioneers in the field like Prof. N Gopinath who has performed the first open heart surgery in the country and Prof Soma Raju, who performed the first angioplasty at the Care Foundation, Dr Naresh Trehan who performed the first robotic surgery at Escorts Hospital and Prof.Hanger from the Srinagar Hospital providing cardiac health care in constrained conditions and other specialists and young doctors like Dr D Prasada Rao and other students of cardiology.

My greetings and best wishes to all.

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