The Current Status of Cardiac Surgery in South Asia

Nazmul Hosain ¹, Farzana Amin ², Somaiya Rehman ³, Bhagawan Koirala ⁴

¹ Chittagong Medical College, Chittagong, Bangladesh; ² Northern Health, Prince George, BC, Canada; ³ Rehman Medical Institute, Peshawar, Pakistan; ⁴ Tribhuvan University Institute of Medicine, Kathmandu, Nepal;

Date, time and location: 2018.05.26 10:30, Press Hall, 2F

Abstract

Introduction

The 8 South Asian countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka collectively possesses an area of 1.9 million square miles inhabited by a population of 1.8 billion making it the World’s most densely populated part. These countries have historic, cultural, ethnic and genetic links..

Methods

Record keeping and compilation is not well organized in most of these countries. Authentic data is hard to find. Best information often comes from an unusual source like Anesthetists’ society or corporate houses. Thorough search of the printed and electronic materials has been made. The authors visited all these countries and contacted the eminent surgeons personally or through mails. All information is crosschecked and then compiled.

Results

Six of these South Asian countries namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have their cardiac surgical program. Collectively they perform around 190000 cardiac operations a year. India performs the highest number of cardiac operations in the region around 150000 followed by Pakistan around 21000, Bangladesh around 11000, Sri Lanka around 5500 and Nepal around 2000. But when the country population is taken into consideration, Sri Lanka has by far the best figure at 265 operations per million population followed by India (113), Pakistan (108), Nepal (69) and Bangladesh (68).

Conclusion

If number of operation per million populations is considered, Bangladesh and Nepal are lagging behind where as Pakistan has a comparable figure with India. Sri Lanka has the best figures in the region. However when compared to the figures of the Western World, even the bright Lankan figures look dull. Despite qualitative excellence Cardiac Surgery in South Asia is lagging behind the World standards in numerical terms and has to make improvement to cater almost a quarter of the World population living here.