Guidelines and affordability

IN a recent regional cardiology meeting, a top cardiologist, Dr A, from India remarked that some of the current cardiology guidelines are impractical in countries such as India and should not be followed blindly.

Many of the guidelines for the practice of cardiology which have been drawn up by cardiologists in Europe and the United States are based mainly on trials conducted in Europe and the US. Current guidelines rarely involve cardiologists from Asia, and do not take into account the state of development in these regions.

Dr A quoted the example of Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillators (ICD). These devices are implantable under the skin and are meant to detect life-threatening heart rhythms and produce an electric shock that is delivered to the heart muscle to attempt to "shock" the rhythm back into a normal one.