09:40, 9 August 2022
YEREVAN, AUGUST 8, ARMENPRESS. Over 1400 heart surgeries have been performed in Armenia this year as part of the life-saving Stent For Life service within the framework of the government-funded free healthcare.
The Stent for Life program is being carried out since 2015.
The Director of Cardiology & Cardiovascular Surgery Services at the Erebuni Medical Center of Yerevan Hamlet Hayrapetyan said they have performed the heart surgeries on an average of 2000-2200 people every year since 2015.
Hayrapetyan says the program resulted in a decrease of cardiac arrest-related deaths in the recent years (cardiac arrest deaths were 8,4% in 2015, and 3,9% in 2021).
In 2018, the program was expanded and coverage was also extended to people who don’t have ST elevation.
Many patients seek free stent placement surgeries, but specifically the Stent for Life program has concrete criteria, such as a time period of 12 hours in between the onset of the disease and admission to hospital, heart muscle elevation and others.
Around 14,000 surgeries were performed in total.
When the program was launched in 2015, the budget was 950 million drams, whereas in 2022 the government allocated 1 billion 650 million drams.
The program is done in 13 hospitals, 3 of which in provinces.
Gayane Gaboyan