Bandar Seri Begawan - Hospitals in Brunei should adopt a heart failure programme to identify patients who have high risks of heart diseases at an early stage and decrease the number of admitted patients, said a consultant cardiologist.

Dr Kenneth Ng of Gleneagles JPMC said that although the programme will "not totally eliminate" the increasing number of heart diseases in Brunei, it will help to empower patients to rake greater care of themselves.

"The programme will get patients to take more care of their own health, and to take charge and control of their heart situations," he told The Brunei Times.

During his talk on "The Importance of a Heart Failure Management Programme A Local Perspective", he said that since January last year, Gleneagles had 43 patients, aged 50 to 70, under their heart failure programme.

He said that a lot of patients under the programme were overweight, and recommended that perhaps a weight reduction programme be introduced to improve the management of the heart failure programme.

Dr Ng explained that the programme would ensure that doctors and their multidisciplinary team, comprising nurses and social workers, will make sure their patients are optimally treated.

"In the programme, we will also deploy nurses who will teach the patients to take care of themselves, such as identifying signs and symptoras of heart diseases."

He further said that for heart patients with obesity under the programme, they would be able to control their salt intake (a contributor to the problem) themselves because they would look out for that once they are educated on the problem.

He highlighted that with the deployment of the programme, not all heart failure patients needed to be admitted into hospitals.

"Patients can either be in-hospital or referred patients who can stay at home, under the programme. This programme will help to ensure their quality of life," he said.

With the significant figure (19.3 per cent) of people in Brunei dying from heart diseases, Dr Ng said that the main thing to help prevent the problem was through education.

"Also, people have to be willing to change their lifestyles. Things like diabetes, hypertension, smoking and high cholesterol are risk factors that can be controlled," he said.

Another consultant cardiologist Dr Patrick Ang at Gleneagles JPMC, said that people should avoid eating fried food.

Dr Ang said that diet, high blood pressure and diabetes were among the leading causes of heart surgeries.

"Heart disease is the number one killer everywhere. The number of heart surgeries are steadily increasing every year in Brunei," he said.

He said that if people started taking care of their diet now, it could help delay heart diseases from coming so early in life.

Dr Ang also reiterated the point that education was one way to ease the problem of the increasing number of heart diseases in the Sultanate.

"Education from young is important, where it should start from schools. Children should also refrain from eating unhealthy food (such as fast food and fried food)," he said.  -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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