Dr Sook Yin Medical Director at the Cayman Heart Fund	Suzy Soto Chairperson of the Cayman Heart Fund

The newly formed Cayman Heart Fund is hosting its first symposium and health fair over the weekend in order to boost awareness of what they say is the Cayman Islands biggest health problem: cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Dr Sook Yin, Medical Director at the Cayman Heart Fund, says that CVD kills more people in the Cayman Islands than any other cause of death and is almost totally preventable.

“A lot of people may not know that heart disease is the number one killer and that there are so many things you can do to prevent heart disease from coming on,” she said.

The Cardiac Symposium will be held on Friday, 16 May at St Matthew’s University from 5:30 pm to 9:15 pm and will offer a chance for Cayman’s health professionals to hear from some of the United States’ leading cardiology experts.

Taking place at the Family Life Centre on Saturday, 17 May from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, the Heart Health Fair will offer free screenings and host a series of short lectures that will cover a wide range of issues that affect people’s heart condition such as smoking, obesity and women’s health issues.

Because government agencies do not track or keep a registry of things like CVD and how many people actually die from the disease, there are no real numbers for the Cayman Islands.

However, it is widely assumed by local health professionals that, like much of the rest of the world CVD, is a huge problem here.

Dr Yin said, “All we can go on at the moment is what we see in the medical profession and also in the hospital admission rates. Realistically cardiovascular disease is the main disease process that we deal with every day in our practice.”

Two of the biggest problems that the Cayman Heart Fund is trying to battle are lack of awareness and people’s failure to interpret the symptoms of CVD correctly.

Chairperson of the Cayman Heart Fund, Suzy Soto, admits that she lived in “denial” over her own heart problems and would not be alive today if it was not for her pacemaker.

“My heart was trying to shut down but I wasn’t ready to go yet,” she said. “The worst thing was that I had a mother who had a pacemaker and she kept telling me I needed a pacemaker.”

Family history is one of the major indicators that people often overlook when it comes to recognizing heart problems and if someone in your family has CVD, the odds of you developing some sort of heart complication rise sharply.

Organisers are also encouraging the public to take advantage of free cardiac risk screenings that could help identify unknown heart conditions before it’s too late. The screenings include a comprehensive set of tests; blood pressure testing, body mass index (BMI) testing, blood glucose testing and cholesterol screening. For those who get screened for cholesterol levels the Cayman Heart Fund says that people should fast for 10 hours prior to testing.

Many people misinterpret chest pains as indigestion and Dr Yin says that that is another dangerous assumption that can cost people their lives.

“The number of times a person is sitting at home with chest pain, normally they sit there for five or six hours, too embarrassed to go to the hospital because it may be indigestion but the fact is that, if these people know they have risk factor, they need to go [to the hospital.]”

Strokes and heart attacks are not the only consequences of cardiovascular disease and, as Dr Yin points out, in some cases blindness can result and even the amputation of limbs, saying, “Arteries get blocked up in the leg and when you walk you get pain in it but if you don’t pay attention to it [or] you don’t pick up on the fact that your leg pains may not be arthritis [and] that it might be from cardiovascular disease you could lose your leg.”

One of the goals of the Cayman Heart Fund is to better equip work places and public institutions with defibrillators that dramatically increase the chances of survival for heart attack victims.

Recently the owners of the Cracked Conch restaurant donated a defibrillator to the Cayman Heart Fund, who promptly gave the life saving device to Cayman’s Little League Children’s Baseball Association so that any cardiac events on the field can be dealt with immediately.

The American Heart Association estimates that over 80 million American adults (one in three) live with one or more types of cardiovascular disease.

They also say that nearly 2,400 people die of cardiovascular disease every day in the United States and, according to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, cardiovascular disease kills more people than Cancer.

trent@caymannetnews.com


1. Causes and Risk- factors of Heart Attacks and Strokes

Things We Can’t Change
Certain factors increase the risk of a heart attack. Some can be changed, while others are inherited. The major factors individuals can’t change include: age, gender and heredity.

Age
Four out of five deaths from the disease are in people over age 65. In this age group, women are twice as likely to die from heart attacks as men.

Gender
*  Women are more likely to die from heart disease than from all forms of cancer, chronic lung disease, pneumonia, diabetes, accidents and AIDS combined.
*  However, men have a greater life-long risk of heart attack, and experience attacks earlier in life.

Heredity
You’re at greater risk if your parents had heart disease.

Things We Can Change
The major factors individuals can change include: smoking, high blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, obesity, physical inactivity and being overweight.

Smoking
Smokers have twice as high a risk of heart attack as nonsmokers, and have two to four times the risk of sudden cardiac death. Smokers are also more likely to die quickly and suddenly than nonsmokers.

High blood pressure
African-Americans have the highest death rates from the disease. This may be due to their higher rates of high blood pressure; about 1 in 3 black adults have high blood pressure, compared to about 1 in 4 white adults. High blood pressure is also generally more severe among elderly African-Americans than elderly whites, leading to more cases of strokes, heart disease and kidney failure.

Cholesterol and cholesterol levels
Cholesterol is a waxy substance found in all parts of your body. It helps make cell membranes, some hormones, and vitamin D. Cholesterol comes from two sources: your body and the foods you eat.

• Blood cholesterol is made in your liver. Your liver makes all the cholesterol your body needs.
• Dietary cholesterol comes from animal foods like meats, whole milk dairy foods, egg yolks, poultry and fish.
• Eating too much dietary cholesterol can make your blood cholesterol go up. Foods from plants, like vegetables, fruits, grains, and cereals, do not have any dietary cholesterol.

2. Stroke Warning Signs
The American Stroke Association says these are the warning signs of stroke:

• Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
• Sudden, severe headache with no known cause

Heart Attack Warning Signs
Some heart attacks are sudden and intense but most heart attacks start slowly, with mild pain or discomfort. Often people affected aren’t sure what’s wrong and wait too long before getting help. Here are signs that can mean a heart attack is happening:

• Chest discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, or that goes away and comes back. It can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain.
• Discomfort in other areas of the upper body. Symptoms can include pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.
• Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.
• Other signs may include breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness

As with men, women’s most common heart attack symptom is chest pain or discomfort. But women are somewhat more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting, and back or jaw pain.

(Source: The American Heart Association)