Providing quality care key to earn trust of the patients

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the number 1 cause of death globally: more people die annually from CVDs than from any other cause. An estimated 17.9 million people died from CVDs in 2016, representing 31% of all global deaths. Of these deaths, 85% are due to heart attack and stroke.

Over three-quarters of CVD deaths take place in low- and middle-income countries like Bangladesh. Out of the 17 million premature deaths (under the age of 70) due to noncommunicable diseases in 2015, 82% are in low- and middle-income countries, and 37% are caused by CVDs.

Most cardiovascular diseases can be prevented by addressing behavioural risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet and obesity, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol using population-wide strategies. People with cardiovascular disease or who are at high cardiovascular risk need early detection and management using counselling and medicines, as appropriate.

Recently Dr Ong Sea Hing, a Consultant Cardiologist working at Farrer Park Hospital in Singapore visited Dhaka, Bangladesh and had a conversation with Star Health regarding many aspects of cardiac care. His area of subspecialty is in coronary artery angioplasty and stenting including complex coronary interventions. He is also trained in structural heart interventions.

Dr Ong was asked about the reasons why people seek cardiac care in Singapore since the discipline has earned the attention in many countries and there are a handful number of doctors available in most of the countries including Bangladesh. He replied that the main reason is the quality of care and the trust upon the doctors that Singapore - it is not the cutting edge equipment. He said, "Many of the patients come to us because of who we are and because we to meet one of the important things – being trustworthy and doing the right thing about the patients."

According to Dr Ong, the medical world now is becoming more and more commercial and the patients know that as well and sometimes doctors are getting a very bad reputation. He adds, "I see the people who are gone to Farrer Park Hospital more as the people of the same kind who believe in the values of the hospital, fairness, valuation and doing the right thing for patients. I think this is important that you know that the fine people you see trust in this hospital."

About the cutting advancement in the cardiac treatment, Dr Ong opined that in angioplasty and stenting, currently there are not that many new developments because it is quite well established but there is some new equipment, for example, new rotor blades, new drilling devices, new high-pressure ballons. The new equipment usually comes to Singapore first because they have special access by the authorities. Then there are some advancements in terms of interventions with the use of new equipment.