On Sunday, May 31, 2009 at King Abdulaziz Cardiac Center in the National Guard Health Affairs organized a Cardiovascular Disease Management Program to screen the NGHA administrative staff for Cardiac Risk Factors. It’s theme for the day was “Be smart, look after your heart.”
This was the third successful screening that KACC has carried out in one month; the first was on May 12, 2009 for the International Nurses Day which screened the hospital’s nurses, and the second was on May 24, 2009 for the medical personnel.
The Director of the Cardiac Clinics Dr. Mohammad Bdeir related how the idea first originated from a nurse coordinator in the Cardiac Clinics. “This year we decided to provide a screening for the nursing staff and other allied health care providers.” They checked them for smoking, weight, obesity, blood pressure, blood sugar for diabetes and lipids; the bad cholesterol (LDL), the good cholesterol (HDL) and the triglycerides. “We felt that this was a way to make people aware of what they may have so they can take care of it.”
Dr. Bdeir mentioned how these common adult diseases kill more people than cancers and accidents. He pointed out that the Gulf States; especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. “We discovered that about 60% of the people that we screened were either obese or overweight, that 30% had abnormalities in their glucose – either diabetes or pre-diabetes. We also discovered that a quarter of the patients who were taking medication for high blood pressure were not taking enough medications.”
The goal of the screenings was to help people be more aware of their cardiovascular risk factors and decrease them to lead a healthier life. The program worked to educate people about the major causes of heart attacks and strokes and where they stand. Heart attacks are mainly caused by obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and smoking. The staff had their weight, blood pressure and blood sugar tested by medical personnel from the Cardiac Center. The medical staff carried out the tests before carefully explaining the results to the patients, advising them on what they can do to deal with certain problems.
Dr. Bdeir noted that although many people who work in hospitals think they might be immune to things like these, the screenings proved that they were just like everybody else and needed to take better care of their bodies.
He concluded with saying that while the screenings were successful the plan isn’t to stop there. If possible, they seek to not only have routine screenings in the future, but also widen the reach of awareness to reach the community at large.