Cardiac Rehabilitation
Dr Sadullah Basha, who heads the Rehabilitation Centre at The Institute of Cardio Vascular Diseases (ICVD), Chennai outlines a typical cardiovascular rehabilitation programme.
What is Cardiac Rehabilitation?
Cardiac rehabilitation is designed to help patients with heart disease recover faster and enable them to return to as normal a lifestyle as possible, quickly.
ICVD has a separate wing for Cardiac Rehabilitation that attempts at reviving heart health using different modalities: Clinical, Nutritional, Physiotherapeutic and Psychological.
Who is a rehabilitation programme targeted at?
Rehabilitation Guidelines are given for :
Patients with heart disease, which is asymptomatic. Here, the patient has not noticed the damage to heart muscle as he has not had significant chest pain or any other symptom of coronary heart disease.
Patients who have heart disease such as cardiomyopathy and are experiencing symptoms like Angina Pectoris, Breathlessness, Myocardial Infarction (a heart attack) etc.
Patients who have undergone surgical intervention such as for a cardiac event/problem. Surgical intervention could be in the form of Angioplasty, a CABG (bypass surgery), Valve replacement, Transplants, correction of complex congenital defects etc.
The last category requires a slightly different kind of care, as the fact that the patient has undergone surgery must be kept in mind. Post Surgical Rehabilitation for adults.
What are elements of a cardiac rehab program?
Heart Health is revived by integrating the following:
What does a rehab programme set out to achieve?
A Cardiac Rehab Programme hopes to make the patient:
- Feel better faster.
- Get stronger.
- Reduce the risks of future heart problems.
- Live longer.
