When Air Pollution Behaves Like a Cigarette: The Alarming Link to Heart Inflammation & Surgery Risks – Dr Tanmai Yermal Jain

There is no longer any question about how air pollution affects heart health. There is mounting evidence that long-term exposure to contaminated air might have detrimental effects on the heart.

When tiny particulate matter, especially PM2.5 and PM10, enters the bloodstream through the lungs, it causes blood vessel inflammation, alters heart rhythm, and speeds up the formation of arterial plaque. This little exposure eventually contributes to the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and cardiac surgery.

The World Health Organization's acceptable standards for air quality are often exceeded in numerous parts of India, such as Delhi, Pune, and Mumbai. For people with previous medical conditions that increase their risk of heart disease, chronic exposure is a major worry.

Diabetes, coronary artery disease, and hypertension are a few examples. The immediate demand for medical care is made more difficult by this group's severe concern about air pollution.

Oxidative stress, a chemical imbalance that damages healthy cells, is caused on by pollution particles entering the body. The endothelium, the arteries' inner lining, becomes inflamed as such, stiffening them and increasing their susceptibility to blockages.

Long-term research shows that continuous exposure to poor air quality also thickens artery walls and speeds up the development of atherosclerosis, which is what causes heart attacks and necessitates operations like bypass surgery (CABG) or angioplasties.

Cardiologists are witnessing a rise in younger patients who suddenly develop premature heart blockages or inflammation, even in the absence of conventional risk factors like high cholesterol and smoking. In fact, air pollution's unseen effects act as a sluggish, persistent irritant that silently and continually deteriorates the cardiovascular system every single day.

Air pollution exposure can potentially affect the recovery of individuals after heart surgery. Continuous exposure can cause problems, slow the healing of the incision, and impair lung function following surgery.

Due to this, some cardiac specialists have started to advise testing lung function before to surgery and taking it into account during postoperative treatment, especially during months when pollution is expected to be high.

Therefore, environmental factors must now be considered for preventative heart health. Good lung health, early coronary artery disease screening, and regular heart monitoring have become increasingly important.

Furthermore, even simple lifestyle adjustments might lessen the negative effects of air pollution on the heart. For instance, people could opt to concentrate on indoor activity, wear protective N95 masks outside, drink plenty of water, and consume an antioxidant-rich diet during times of heavy pollution.

Though policy changes and cleaner energy options are essential at a societal level, individual awareness remains the best defense on a personal level. If people fully understood that pollution impacts the heart in the same way that smoking does, it might change how urgent they feel about it.

Healthier hearts cannot be protected simply by tracking cholesterol or blood pressure any more than by monitoring body weight. They require attention to environmental health risks that are often invisible in the risk-benefit calculation. Understanding how air pollution relates to the role of inflammation in heart disease and the growing burden of heart surgery is the first step in prevention and improvement of outcomes.

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