Heart diseases are currently an important health problem in Holguin. Cardiovascular diseases constitute the first cause of death in this province with great human, economic and social impact.
Cardiovascular risk increases mainly due to hypercholesterolemia, arterial hypertension, diabetes, obesity and smoking. Other factors are associated with family history, age and sex. The increasing aging of the population of Holguín means that the largest number of patients treated are older adults.
For the prevention of heart disease, it is recommended to adopt healthy lifestyles and diet patterns and to exercise regularly. Similarly, health promotion actions, good performance of primary care and high quality medical assistance are essential for its control.
Likewise, avoiding alcohol and smoking prevent heart failure of toxic origin. According to reports from the Pan American Health Organization, exposure to smoking by-products is the cause of 10 percent of all deaths caused by cardiovascular damage.
According to Dr. Fabián Ignacio Fernández Chelala, head of the Cardiology Service at the Vladimir Ilich Lenin General Hospital, Holguín province has made progress in the early diagnosis and treatment of conduction disorder arrhythmia and in the follow-up of ischemic heart disease.
Although it does not have the latest technology, medical assistance in this specialty has progressed in diagnostic precision from echocardiography to Doppler, the development of electrophysiology and the use of magnetic resonance imaging. The province has the highest rate of primary cardiac tumor – myxoma – operated on in eastern Cuba.
Statistics from Cuba’s Health Yearbook, in its latest edition, reveal that around 60 percent of deaths from heart disease occur due to ischemic ailments.
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