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HEART DISEASE: TREATMENT AND REHABILITATION

If treatment isn't enough, cardiac rehabilitation allows patients to recover from heart problems or heart surgery, helps them heal faster, and reduces their risk for future cardiac problems.

 
  Diagnosing and Treating Heart Disease
A heart disease treatment plan should be tailored to your specific condition, its severity and causes, and your current health and lifestyle. This may include more than a procedure. It may also mean making lifestyle changes and taking medications. The best thing to do is maintain open communication with your doctor about your risks and what is right for you. The following are procedures used to diagnose and treat heart disease.
  • Exercise stress tests measure symptoms, blood pressure, and EKG (electrocardiogram) during exercise.
  • Imaging procedures provide still or moving pictures through X-ray, fluoroscopy, MRI, or CT scans.
  • Electrophysiology studies, or echocardiograms, examine heart rhythm disturbances using electrodes positioned over the patient's heart.
  • Cardiac catheterization diagnoses and/or treats an obstruction. An angiogram introduces dye through a catheter to observe the heart's blood vessel flow by X-ray; a balloon angioplasty procedure uses a tiny balloon-tipped catheter to help unclog blockages.
  • Surgical procedures can bypass clogged arteries, replace valves, insert pacemakers, and defibrillators or replace the entire heart.
 
Cardiac Rehabilitation

Cardiac rehab is a medically supervised program to help heart patients recover quickly and improve their overall physical and mental functioning. The goal is to reduce the risk of another cardiac event or to keep an already present heart condition from getting worse.

The benefits of participating in a cardiac rehab program are:		  
  • Faster recovery
  • Improved fitness
  • Decreased symptoms
  • Reduced fear and anxiety
  • Improved confidence
  • Lifelong changes are made
  • Reduced risk of further heart problems
  • Reduced risk of death
  
   
The services that cardiac rehabilitation might include are supervised exercise sessions and education about risk factors of heart disease, signs and symptoms of heart disease, and ways you can prevent another cardiac event. Most importantly, cardiac rehab will provide the social and emotional support you will need to adjust to your condition and make lifelong lifestyle changes to reduce your risk factors for further heart problems.