 Hello everyone, I am Dr. Padmanap Ghamat, Professor and HOD of Cardiology at KMC Hospital, Ambedkar Circle, Mangalore. Today I am going to talk on a very important topic of preventive cardiology. All of you know that prevention is better than cure and there is always early diagnosis and diagnosing a heart disease is a cornerstone in management of any patient with heart disease. We have seen people with a heart disease the diagnosis is missed because there is no availability of equipment. So it is very important that we do the correct test before embarking on a diagnosis of a heart disease. In villages we do not get the equipments for diagnosis of a heart ailment especially when I say a heart ailment a heart attack. So whenever you get a symptom of a heart disease that is in the form of either chest pain, central chest pain or when you get breathless when you walk up stairs or staircase when you climb staircase or any symptom which is exertional you should never neglect. How do you diagnose a heart disease that person has a heart disease? When you get these symptoms the first and the simplest tool is the ECG. But we have seen that this ECG is sometimes not available even in remote areas of our country and villages constitute a large proportion of our country's you know network and we have seen that by making this ECG available in small small villages we are able to diagnose these heart diseases at a rate now more than before. So when a patient goes to the doctor if ECG is done we will be able to pick up at least 50% of the time whether the patient has had a heart disease or not and any patient going with a chest pain if ECG shows a changes immediately the ECG can be uploaded in the WhatsApp or any form of telemedicine technology so that doctor sitting in a city can report this ECG. So by means of technology we are able to help a person in distress even in remote areas of our country. We have been able to do that I feel happy that being in Manipal institution we are able to do this for the people of our country especially people living in the villages. Now we have installed around 225 ECG machines all across Karnataka mainly 17 districts and this initiative is known as Cardiology at Doorsteps which goes by the acronym CAD and also CAD acronym stands for coronary artery disease which is the dreaded disease of heart disease. After ECG in case if there is a problem the patient is immediately referred the doctors who are in the villages or in the remote peripheries they pick up this heart disease they put the image in the WhatsApp and we are sitting in Mangalore or wherever the doctors cardiologist who are in the group they report this ECG and the patient is given the correct direction to go to the nearest tertiary center. So around 18 districts we are covering and wherever the patient is hailing from the nearest cath lab or nearest tertiary center is referred. So this is the initiative which we have taken as a part of a preventive cardiology once the patient reaches the hospital then it becomes easier. So even in transit we are able to track the patient that the patient has had a heart attack even before shifting the patient we load the patient giving the what is called as the loading dose so that we get that extra time while shifting we get around 1 to 2 hours of time so that the patient is able to reach the hospital. Recently we have had several patients who are diagnosed with a heart attack in the peripheries we never thought that they will reach the hospital but because of the prompt diagnosis and early diagnosis by the ECG patient is able to get the correct treatment in the periphery and is able to reach the hospital. Once they reach the hospital all technical team and specialized you know doctors we are able to deliver the good treatment. So preventive cardiology is now the main thing in cardiac diagnosis and it is the most important part of treating any patient with a heart ailment and also once the patient comes here that much time we have saved we are able to do the procedure in the form of either angioplasty and if patient has got multiple blocks then they may be subjected to bypass surgery. There are so many other aspects of preventive cardiology it is not only ECG diagnosis also we should be teaching the patient about good healthy lifestyle they should be adopting healthy lifestyle healthy food that is healthy diet and daily exercise we should also stress upon the need for adopting healthy lifestyle.