To raise awareness of the risk of heart attack, the Secours Tour bus will travel across Occitania this summer. And because too many people still die of cardiac arrest, an introduction to life-saving gestures is also offered.
This red bus, if you cross it, you cannot miss it. So push your curiosity up to it and do a little heart check, like you would your car before going on vacation. This summer, for the first time, the Secours Tour is stopping in around twenty towns in Occitania. On the initiative of two interns in medicine, this traveling bus proposes to inform the population about the cardiovascular risk factors and to initiate to gestures that save. “Because from the lipid plaque on the artery to myocardial infarction, we are talking about the same disease. And we can act both on the risks of exposure and on the intervention at the time of the infarction” , underlines Quentin Estrade, intern in cardiology at the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Toulouse, co-initiator of the Secours Tour with Antoine Noguero. About fifty medical students are involved in the project.
In France, there are 120,000 heart attacks each year, which are the cause of 40,000 deaths. During a heart attack, every minute counts, yet in seven out of ten cases, the patient is outside of a care structure.
Diet, physical activity, smoking cessation
Because he saw that life-saving gestures were useful outside the hospital, the future doctor says. “One evening in December 2021, in Toulouse, on returning very late from an evening with Antoine, we saw, near his home, people gathered around a person on the ground. There was a lot of panic and little of reactions to what was a cardiac arrest. We took turns doing a cardiac massage before the arrival of the Samu, he got out of it. From there, we said to ourselves that there was a thing to do, that we could avoid deaths by acting before and by training in cardiac massage. According to estimates by the French Federation of Cardiology, 80% of sudden deaths (infarction) could be avoided by acting on the risk factors ” , continues Quentin Estrade.
To prevent a heart attack, several levers must be considered. “Poor diet, overweight, smoking, physical inactivity, or heredity (case of a heart attack in a parent, for example), are factors on which everyone can assess themselves and we can also rely on connected objects, applications”, emphasizes Professor Jérôme Roncalli, cardiologist at the Toulouse University Hospital and vice-president of the French Federation of Cardiology. “But diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol cannot be seen, they are silent killers that you have to seek out through screening with your general practitioner. In France, we are so focused on the cure, that we don’t think too much about protecting your heart”, adds Professor Jean Ferrières, cardiologist at the Toulouse University Hospital, president of the Midi-Pyrenees cardiology association.
Beware of activities that you never practice outside of holidays
“In summer, people settle down and have a positive attitude towards their body. If they take care of it, they will also take care of their heart. But during the holidays, we also practice new activities , sometimes extreme, it’s euphoria and it can be dangerous for your heart if you are among those at risk or if you exceed certain limits. Running at 195 beats per minute for 45 minutes or climbing a cycle pass with a heart rate of 160 when you are 70 years old, it is not recommended, you have to set limits and be a minimum prepared”, explain the two cardiologists.