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Scientific letters
A population based study of Ramadan fasting and acute coronary syndromes
  1. J Al Suwaidi1,
  2. A Bener2,
  3. A Suliman1,
  4. R Hajar1,
  5. A M Salam1,
  6. M T Numan1,
  7. H A Al Binali1
  1. 1Department of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, Hamad General Hospital and Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, State of Qatar
  2. 2Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Hamad General Hospital and Hamad Medical Corporation
  1. Correspondence to:
    J Al Suwaidi
    Department of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, Hamad Medical Corporation and Hamad General Hospital, PO Box 3050, Doha, State of Qatar; jha01hmc.org.qa

https://doi.org/10.1136/hrt.2003.012526

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    Sustained fasting over a period is a feature of several of the world’s great religions. One of the five fundamental rituals of Islam is fasting during the month of Ramadan. Muslims neither eat nor drink anything from dawn until sunset. Fasting may have negative effects on cardiac patients because of the limited time allowed for food intake and the heavy physical worship that is performed after a heavy meal, as well as the inability to take any medications during fasting, which may be essential for the patients.1

    Despite the fact that most clinicians worldwide treat Muslim patients, data on the incidence of patients presenting with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) in relation to fasting during Ramadan are lacking. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether Ramadan fasting has a negative effect on the incidence of presentation with ACS such as acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and unstable angina (UA).

    METHODS

    This study was based at Hamad General Hospital, Doha, Qatar, which is the only tertiary care centre in the country and so all patients with ACS are treated here. The Hamad General Hospital cardiology database was used for this study; this database comprises data collected from all patients admitted to the cardiology …

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