All the necessary medicines are available in Serbia for patients who have suffered a heart attack. Responsible behaviour of patients in adhering to all the measures of secondary prevention is the best way to prevent the undesired event from happening ever again.
Every day, more than 60 people suffer a heart attack in Serbia, which turns out to be fatal for 16 to 18 patients. The data of the National Hospital Register reveal that patients treated for acute myocardial infarction in Serbia tend to be younger that the European average – namely, men by one to two years and women by four years. The number of the affected is still on the rise and those affected are increasingly younger. Why is that so?
- Smoking and untreated high blood pressure particularly jeopardise health, while increased level of fats in blood, diabetes, and obesity represent additional risk factors. Not only is insufficient physical activity characteristic of 68% of adult population in Serbia, but also our children spend increasingly less time playing with a ball and increasingly more time with a joystick. If we add stress, increased intake of sweets, unhealthy fast food with lots of saturated fats of animal origin, often accompanied with alcohol, to the sedentary way of life, it is self-explanatory why we have more and more people who have suffered a heart attack at the age of 30 – explained Bojana Podgorac Milenković, Pharmacist-Biochemist MS, Director of Marketing of Rx Portfolio at Hemofarm.
Prevention
Patients who have already suffered a myocardial infarction bear a high risk of a repeated heart attack or death, especially during the first year after the first myocardial infarction. Secondary prevention therefore plays an important role in treatment of these patients, including the following: treatment of existing risk factors, preventing appearance of new risk factors, and treatment with antithrombotic drugs.
- Secondary prevention includes taking non-pharmacological and pharmacological actions. Non-pharmacological actions involve quitting smoking, more physical activity – minimum 30 minutes a day, considerably reduced intake of salt and fats of animal origin as well as whole milk products, sweets and alcohol, accompanied by increased intake of fruit, vegetables and fish. All of the above is not enough without regular taking of prescribed drugs. Pharmacological actions involve the use of: medical products for treatment of existing risk factors, namely: antihypertensives, hypolipemic, antidiabetic, and antithrombotic drugs. Individual use of these medical products in secondary prevention reduces the risk of a new heart attack, stroke or death by 25%, while a concomitant use of these medicines reduces the risk for as much as 75% – pointed out Bojana Podgorac Milenković.
Antithrombotic therapy reduces the risk
Dual antithrombotic therapy is especially important and all the necessary medical products are available to patients in Serbia.
- Dual antithrombotic therapy, which involves combined use of acetylsalicylic acid and contemporary medicines from P2Y12 inhibitor group, is a corner stone in treatment of patients who suffered a myocardial infarction. It is of crucial importance to treat patients with loading doses of acetylsalicylic acid and P2Y12 inhibitors at the moment of diagnosing myocardial infarction. After that, the treatment with these medicines is continued over a period which will be individually assessed for each patient, which is in most cases for one year. In patients with high risk of developing a new cardiovascular event, the use of this therapy can be prolonged up to 30 months. It is important to point out that patients in Serbia have all the medicines from P2Y12 inhibitor group available – klopidogrel, prasugrel, and tikagrelor, so our doctors can chose an optimal therapy for each patient – recommended Bojana Podgorac Milenković from Hemofarm.
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