Heart attacks strike earlier in the UAE

At 38, Alaa Aldin Tahineh doesn’t fit the profile of the typical heart disease patient. But he’s representative of a new category of ever younger residents hit by cardiovascular problems.

“I got diagnosed because I was experiencing symptoms such as severe heart pain and breathing difficulties,” he says. “I was shocked, but Alhamdulillah.”

The Syrian national has recently been treated for heart disease at Abu Dhabi’s Burjeel Hospital. Now on the road to recover, Tahineh has a few watchwords for those who want to prevent what he thinks is unnecessary — and avoidable — health trauma.

“My advice for people is to quit smoking and exercise,” he says, adding that a healthy lifestyle is the best way to prevent heart problems.

Doctors across the UAE say they are seeing more and more younger people suffering from heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases due to stress, smoking, obesity and a lack of exercise.

“We see patients under 35 with severe heart problems. I had seen a patient below 30 years old with severe rheumatic valve disease.  This is common among those coming from rural areas in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and India,” says Dr Walid Shaker, Consultant and Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Burjeel Hospital, Abu Dhabi. He and his colleagues have noticed that patients with severe heart problems are about 15 years younger in the UAE compared to the rest of the world — except possibly North America.

“A major cause of this paradigm shift is the significant change in people’s lifestyle given the highly competitive, ultra-aggressive, and extremely fast modern lifestyle,” he says.