Exec­u­tive sum­ma­ry

Ongo­ing reforms are being imple­ment­ed to trans­form the health care sys­tem in Sau­di Ara­bia. These reforms aim to estab­lish bet­ter patient track­ing and fol­low-up mech­a­nisms that will ben­e­fit the health sys­tem as a whole and help address com­mon sys­temic bar­ri­ers. Dis­cus­sions around the reform process are also a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light the needs of old­er peo­ple and the poten­tial future health threats they will encounter. Now is the time to pre-empt unnec­es­sary ill­ness due to VHD and put plans into place to strength­en detec­tion, diag­no­sis, and pro­vi­sion of care.

This pol­i­cy brief describes the bur­den of VHD, par­tic­u­lar­ly aor­tic steno­sis, on Saudi’s old­er pop­u­la­tion. Age is a pow­er­ful risk fac­tor for aor­tic steno­sis.¹ Oth­er risk fac­tors are sim­i­lar to those asso­ci­at­ed with car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, includ­ing smok­ing, hyper­ten­sion, ele­vat­ed cho­les­terol lev­els, obe­si­ty, and meta­bol­ic syn­drome.¹

The brief also high­lights the sig­nif­i­cant gap iden­ti­fied between the esti­mat­ed num­ber of indi­vid­u­als like­ly to be affect­ed by aor­tic steno­sis and those treat­ed annu­al­ly, which prompts the ques­tion: why are peo­ple with degen­er­a­tive VHD in Sau­di Ara­bia not receiv­ing avail­able treat­ment?

In this pol­i­cy brief, three explic­it oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­ven­tion are iden­ti­fied to address some of the com­mon bar­ri­ers to indi­vid­u­als obtain­ing opti­mal care. For each key area, there are rec­om­men­da­tions to guide pol­i­cy-mak­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers.