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Vascular surgeon with a vision
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 any of the serious illnesses, be it heart attack, stroke or problems, have their origin in blood vessels. But the surgeon who deals with the blood vessels, the lifeline of the human body, is the least known.
Dr. S.A. Hussain is not angry with this public ignorance or the unfavourable treatment the surgeons of vessels, called vascular surgeons, receive. Instead, he is on a campaign to sensitise people and to improve public health.
"If the blood supply to the heart is reduced, it causes heart attack and if the supply to brain is reduced, it results in stroke," he says. Similarly, decreased blood supply to limbs can lead to non-healing ulcer or formation of gangrene and to organs can cause ischaemia. "If you take care of the blood vessels, you avoid them," says the surgeon who is credited with a number of publications and conference presentations.
And that compels Dr. Hussain, Head of the Department of Vascular Surgery at Government General Hospital, to wax eloquent about vascular diseases and their prevention. In a country like India, the awareness about such illnesses has enormous socio-economic value, he adds.
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conducting conferences, workshops and scientific programmes. According to Dr. Hussain, like angioplasty and stenting of the heart vessels, options of cure are available for general vascular diseases also. But these procedures, termed "endovascular surgery," are highly demanding and expensive due to costly stents and the technical support required.
The dream of Dr. Hussain, who is also the President Elect of the Asian Society of Vascular Surgeons, is to popularise the discipline to a level as it exists in the advanced countries.
The ideal situation will be prevention in most of the cases and intervention in cases which are already affected. But both need awareness.
In fact, it is the awareness about the basic reasons for bad health itself. "It will also help people avoid other diseases too."
Taking the quest for wider dissemination of vascular health information further, the VSI has opened a website with links to various other well known vascular sites too. Success in getting a board is another major milestone in the growth of this speciality, Prof. Hussain say s.
By G. Pramod Kumar.
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The rapidly rising incidence of diabetes and hypertension and the increasing use of tobacco have made a large part of the Indian population vulnerable to vascular diseases. "The only option we have is prevention," he says. This incidence means the prevention of illnesses such as diabetes and habits like smoking
There are problems like deep vein thrombosis and varicose veins, which are commonly seen in women during pregnancy and after delivery and also among people who need to stand for long hours. These needs serious attention as the economic burden they bring, could be worse than a heart attack, says the surgeon. Most of the affected people are in the 40 to 50- years age group.
In an effort to popularise the discipline and create awareness about vascular diseases, Dr. Hussain, along with his friends, founded the Vascular Society of India (VSI) in 1994. The society since then has been
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