Nawaz diagnosed with complicated heart disease: personal physician

Author: News Desk

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been diagnosed with a complicated coronary artery disease and will undergo further scans to finalise a treatment plan.

In a tweet, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo’s personal physician Dr Adnan said Nawaz underwent comprehensive cardiovascular evaluation at the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital in London, United Kingdom.

He said the ex-PM had been diagnosed with “complicated Coronary Artery/Ischemic Heart Disease with significant disease burden”.

Last week, the party’s spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said doctors had advised that Nawaz be shifted to the United States for treatment.

Nawaz travelled to the British capital in an air ambulance accompanied by younger brother Shehbaz Sharif and personal physician Dr Adnan on November 20 – four days after the Lahore High Court directed the federal government to remove his name from the Exit Control List (ECL) for four weeks.

Prior to that, Nawaz, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence in the Al-Azizia corruption reference, was granted eight-week bail on medical grounds by the Islamabad High Court on October 27.

But the deposed prime minister had refused to accept the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s condition to submit an indemnity bond as a guarantee for his return to the country after treatment.

The National Centre for Biotechnology Information defines Ischemia as inadequate blood supply (circulation) to a local area due to blockage of the blood vessels supplying the area.

“Ischemic means that an organ (eg, the heart) is not getting enough blood and oxygen,” it reads. “Ischemic heart disease, also called coronary heart disease (CHD) or coronary artery disease, is the term given to heart problems caused by narrowed heart (coronary) arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle.”

“Although the narrowing can be caused by a blood clot or by constriction of the blood vessel, most often it is caused by build-up of plaque, called atherosclerosis.”

“When the blood flow to the heart muscle is completely blocked, the heart muscle cells die, which is termed a heart attack or myocardial infarction (MI).”