MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — A South Asian-specific heart center has opened at the El Camino Hospital in Mountain View to help fight heart disease among young South Asians, who may be unaware that they are at risk.

According to Ashish Mathur, the executive director of the South Asian Heart Center, the center — which is not a treatment center — identifies the risk factors of heart disease in South Asians, provides recommendations to prevent it, refers people to nutritionists who specialize in South Asian diets, exercise, stress reduction and meditation, and then rechecks these people to monitor and encourage progress.

"The reason why we are doing that is we want to kind of create a center of excellence in the treatment of heart disease for South Asians, and we need to do it ourselves to make that happen. And at the same time, we are building a patient registry for research in this area going forward," Mathur said.

The South Asian Heart Center at El Camino opened in early July after about two years of testing and research. Mathur said physicians at El Camino, a nonprofit hospital, were noticing a high incidence of South Asians with heart problems. 

One cardiologist at El Camino who took notice was Dr. Cesar Molina, the medical director of the South Asian Heart Center. He said there were a large number of young South Asians in the Silicon Valley area in the emergency room with heart attacks and other heart problems.   

"About 6 percent of the heart attacks at El Camino Hospital that show up in the emergency room are South Asian individuals, while they actually account for less than three percent of the overall population and are much younger than the average population served by El Camino hospital," Molina said.

Molina, who has been a physician at El Camino for the past 16 years, said the community became interested in this problem, so meetings were held, a task force was formed, and as a result, the South Asian Heart Center was started. He added that the center was created, and is supported, by the South Asian community and not by El Camino.

"We realized that at that time, no one was, in an official way … doing something about it, so we became advocates of the data," he said. "Our goal is to inform the individuals at risk and educate the physicians about the increased risk of cardiovascular disease in this population."

Molina added that, by combing through research and scientific literature, he found others had reported similar findings in the South Asian community.

One of these researchers is Dr. Enas Enas from Chicago, who has been studying heart disease amongst Indians in the United States for 15 years.

Enas came to speak at El Camino about his research, and he is now a part of El Camino's South Asian Heart Center's physicians advisory group. He is also the founder and director of 15-year-old Coronary Artery Disease Among Asian Indians Research Foundation. He is a member of the American Heart Association, and is originally from Kerala, India.   

Enas spoke at El Camino about the South Asian paradox: that even those who are vegetarians, do not smoke, and do not have high blood pressure are still four times at risk compared to the general population.

According to Enas, more than half of the heart attacks amongst South Asians occur before people turn 50 years old, while the general male population's average age for heart attacks is about 66 and for females, about 70. Enas added that El Camino's South Asian Heart Center is the first center that took his research seriously and is now implementing his research.

Molina said some of those who have come into the South Asian Heart Center so far thought they were healthy and not at risk, but the in-depth screenings at the center identified risk factors so these people were able to modify their lifestyle.

The problem with today's heart evaluations is they are not modified to South Asians, according to Molina. Due to heart problems in younger South Asians, Molina said regular evaluations and traditional guidelines can underestimate risks.

One of the larger hurdles is the belief that since they are young they cannot have heart problems, Molina said.

Overall, South Asians in the age range of 25 to 44 are at the highest risk of cardiac mortality in California, according to Molina. 

"Many times, age can trick you," he said.

To fight this lack of knowledge, Molina said they are telling people who come into the South Asian Heart Center to go back to their physicians and educate them about heart problems amongst South Asians. Molina said the center is also holding public lectures for physicians and showing them data on this topic, and evaluating best practice guidelines for individuals in an effort to decrease the risk of heart disease.

"There's a lot more research that needs to be done, but instead of sitting on our hands and just waiting for more research to come along, we have actually decided to make people aware of this — start educating physicians about this," he said. 

Mathur said that the goal of the South Asian Heart Center — which is not a treatment center, but just gives recommendations — is to spread the word to South Asians and physicians about heart disease and make every doctor's office a mini South Asian heart center.

Now, Mathur said the center has already gotten word out to 120 physicians in the area. The goal of the center is to reach 500 to 1,000 physicians every year. He added that another goal is to meet with 1,000 people every year over the next five years.

Mathur said the center hopes to reach India as well. 

"Looking at this response, we know for a fact that this has been an unmet need," Mathur said.