Heart disease is one of the most important health care ailments prevailing worldwide and around 15-20 per cent of patients attending hospitals have heart-related issues.

Do people know that before super-speciality emerged in Cardiology, heart related ailments were taken care by Doctors in General Medicine but now practically everywhere in the developed world, we have specialized doctors, who are trained specifically to treat heart ailments and are called Cardiologists.

But very often people confuse cardiac problems and reach out to a general cardiologist not knowing and understanding that heart is a complicated subject and cardiologists need to be differentiated as each of them specialize in complicated cardiac ailment and it is crucial to get diagnosed and treated by the correct cardiologist as going to a wrong one may lead into following problems:

- Failure to make a correct diagnosis or worse taking too long to get the right diagnosis

- Improper management of treatment

- Improper performance of a treatment or procedure

- Improper performance of surgery & finally

- Improper medication management

It is important that a heart patient and their caregiver understands who to reach out to as heart patients largely go through various screening and medical advises from various specialists in Cardiology like Interventional Cardiologists, Cardiac Surgeon, Clinical Cardiologist, Cardiac Electrophysiologist, Non-Invasive Cardiologists, Preventive Cardiologists, Paediatric Cardiologists and Paediatric Cardiac Surgeons for diagnosing and treating the heart ailment.

It is advisable that patients should not go directly to a cardio surgeon but first visit a cardiologist, and only when the cardiologist advises the patient the treatment that a cardiologist in that field should be chosen. Below mentioned are various specialists in Cardiology:

Clinical Cardiologist

These people have a reasonable overall knowledge of heart & its disorders. Mostly they look after patients clinically & evaluate them by various investigations like ECG, X Rays, Stress Test, Echocardiography & others.

Interventional Cardiologist

These doctors are trained in doing various procedures like angiography, Angioplasty, Percutaneous Valve Therapies like opening the narrowed valves with Baloon Dilatation & now even replacing the valves in the cath lab without open surgery.

Cardiac Electrophysiologist

These doctors are trained specifically to diagnose & treat heart Rythm problems. Like slowing of heart rate (Bradycardia), fast heart rate (tachycardia), irregular heartbeat or any combination of these. These guys implant pacemakers, ICDs, CRT-P & CRT-D devices usually under local Anaesthesia. Another important job they do is Radiofrequency Ablation for many Arrhythmias.

Cardiac Surgeon

These people are basically surgeons who perform all kinds of heart surgery like CABG, Open Valve Replacement, Repair of congenital heart defects etc. These surgeries are done by opening the chest under GA in operation theatres.

Non-Invasive Cardiologist

These doctors perform TMT, Holter, Echo, Stress Echo, Dobutamine echo & 24 hours BP Monitoring etc. This branch has become very important in the practice of cardiovascular medicine.

Preventive Cardiologist

These doctors are specialists in the prevention of heart disease & also do rehabilitation of cardiac patients.

Paediatric Cardiologists & Paediatric Cardiac Surgeons

These doctors are specifically trained to treat heart problems of children and congenital heart defects.