news

Surgeon blames heart problems on smoking

The Maltese people are paying the price for smoking, coping badly with stress and maintaining an unhealthy lifestyle according to heart surgeon Alex Manché.

And he should know; in 2001 alone his team carried out 400 heart operations and approximately 100 lung operations.

Mr Manché has no doubts as to where he lays a great deal of the blame for the poor state of the nation’s health, even joking that it is not the hospital which employs him, but the major cigarette companies.

"My work would be severely depleted if people stopped smoking," he says wryly.

Mr Manché says that many of the patients he is treating now are men who began smoking 30 or 40 years ago.

"But smoking trends have changed and since women have followed suit and taken up smoking cigarettes themselves, the likelihood is that within 30 or 40 years we will be treating females with what today are still considered typically male health problems,” he says.

Read full interview with Alex Manché