Alarming figures of heart attack

Mumbai has witnessed over six-fold rise in monthly deaths related to heart attack in the first six months of 2021 compared to previous years. Between January and June 2021, as many as 3,000 people lost their lives to heart attacks every month in the city, compared to 500 in 2020.

According to data provided by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, a total of 5,849 patients lost their lives to heart attacks in Mumbai in 2019. This dropped by 3.6 percent when 5,633 patients succumbed to the disease in 2020.

As per the report, between January and June 2021, a total of 17,880 succumbed to heart attacks in the city — a surge of 217 percent over the previous year, according to a reply to an RTI request filed by activist Chetan Kothari.

Dr Avinash Supe, in-charge of the Covid-19 death committee, said there are three major reasons for the surge in deaths related to heart attack i.e., possibility of development of thrombosis among recovered Covid-19 patients, delay in diagnosis of patients during the pandemic and better recording of data.

Globally it has been witnessed that heart attack-related deaths increased during the pandemic, so it is not a new phenomenon that has only been observed in Mumbai. Secondly, since the start of the pandemic, medical practitioners are more conscious of segregation and bifurcation of types of deaths, so it has possibly helped maintain better data pertaining to heart attacks.

It has been observed that SARS-Cov-2 injures the heart and blood vessels in infected patients, which leads to the development of clots, heart inflammation, arrhythmias and heart failure. In August 2021, The Lancet reported that the risk of a first heart attack increased by three to eight times in the week after a Covid-19 diagnosis.

The doctors suggested that, there is a possibility that patients who died of pre-existing heart conditions like decompensated heart disease or heart failure i.e. the heart doesn’t pump blood as well as it should, were categorised as heart attacks without necessary investigation at a time the health system was overwhelmed with Covid-19.

To better understand the trend, doctors say there is a need for better investigation into the deaths and verbal autopsy of the deceased patients.