Medical base aims to tackle looming heart care crisis

With the precision of a heart surgeon, Mya Ong nimbly maneuvered a thin plastic tool into her patient's right shoulder while listening to the rhythmic beeps of a nearby monitor.

Suddenly, the beeping accelerated to a rapid climax before falling to a ominous drone.

"That's the one you don't want," Ong said, indicating toward an alert on a screen that announced the patient was deceased.

Luckily, the operation was being performed on one of four $260,000 high-tech training dummies at St. Jude Advanced Cardiovascular Medical Center, where flatlines can be fixed with the flick of a switch.

Ong is the chief trainer at St. Jude, which last week opened its 17-million-yuan training center in Beijing with a staff of more than 12 experts from across the world. Its aim is to help coach China's future cardiovascular surgeons.

The rate of heart disease in China will jump more than 73 percent by 2030, meaning 7.7 million more heart-related deaths each year, according to a 2010 study published in the American Heart Journal.

"We need to train more Chinese physicians," said Zhang Shu, who heads Beijing Fuwai Hospital's cardiac arrhythmia center. "We have a big population but we don't have enough well-trained cardiologists."

The professor, who is a member of the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society, said circumventing a cardiovascular meltdown not only relies on increasing the number of doctors, but also making sure medics can use advanced technologies.

Just 31 out of 1 million people receive advanced medical devices such as pacemakers in China, compared to 1,000 in every 1 million in the United States, said Chang Fan, a veteran doctor and president of St. Jude China.

"This is a good example of how big the gap is in terms of advanced heart procedures," he said, adding that the St. Jude facility will offer world-class training to more than 2,500 physicians a year, 70 percent of which will be from China.

Zhang at Fuwai Hospital welcomed the government's increased focus on tackling the issue of cardiovascular disease, and said: "We hope that by 2020 we'll have decreased the incidence the condition."