 I am Dr. Narsim Pai working as Associate Professor and Consultant Cardiologist at KMC Ambedkar Circle, Mangalore and today I will be talking on the primary angioplasty. As all of you are aware, cardiovascular diseases is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity not only in our country but also in the West. The incidence of cardiovascular diseases is close to 30 million annually and 3 million heart attacks happen on an yearly basis in a country like ours. But the number of people who receive treatment for heart attack are not 100%. As you are aware, there are three modalities of treatment which a patient receives for an acute myocardial infarction or what we call as a heart attack. One is the medical treatment. The second is the class buster injections like thrombolytic therapy and the third is primary angioplasty. Sadly, only about 10 to 12% of people who have a heart attack receive primary angioplasty in our country. There are various factors why people do not receive primary angioplasty. Some of them being connectivity to the nearest cath lab, delay in the diagnosis of heart attack, delay in transportation of the patient to a center where he can receive the therapy, cost and affordability of the patient. All of these are determinants why people do not reach the center as early because primary angioplasty saves the lives of the patient. We do not receive any treatment for heart attack, we do not receive any treatment for heart attack. We do not receive any treatment for heart attack. We do not receive any treatment for heart attack. We do not receive any treatment for heart attack. What exactly do we do in angioplasty is the blocked vessel is open using a wire and a balloon through a radial or a femoral approach. So the clot dissolves and the block is open and then a small metal tube called stent is implanted inside the coronary vessel so that the flow is restored. The faster you restore the blood flow to the heart, the lesser is the damage to the heart muscle. So the patient's pumping of the heart is preserved and the mortality of the patient is decreased. There are a lot of challenges in doing a primary angioplasty because the operator or the cardiology should be trained, your system should be functional 24 by 7. You need to have a trained sister, cath lab technician who is available at whatever time the patient arrives to the hospital and of course you need not to waste time at all because you have to finish the procedure in less than 90 minutes after the patient's arrival to the hospital. I am very happy to state that our institute has got the state of the art technology and setup so that we can cater to these heart attack patients around the clock. I hope the general public are aware that this modality of treatment is available and try to reach early to the centers where we can make a lot of difference in their mortality and morbidity.