What is it about?
People who have narrowed coronary arteries suffer from chest discomfort when they exert themselves. Coronary angioplasty is a treatment that widens coronary arteries leading to the relief in symptoms for most people. However angioplasty is not a cure and leading a healthy lifestyle (e.g. exercising regularly, quiting smoking and maintaining a healthy weight) can slow the narrowing of coronary arteries. In this study we wanted to find out how lifestyle behaviours before coronary angioplasty compared with those 6 months later.
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Why is it important?
Our results showed that in a sample of 117 people living in Victoria, Australia, there was a significant improvement in self-reported exercise frequency before, compared to 6 months after, coronary angioplasty. However even after treatyment 19% of people did not engage in any type of physical exercise.
Perspectives
This study examined the patterns of lifestyle changes that people did, or did not make, after elective coronary stenting for angina. Findings illustrated the lack of success people had with living a healthy lifestyle even after being diagnosed with heart disease. Even though this study was reported in 2006 it appears that very little has changed in terms of success with lifestyle change. This may be because people have limited access to cardiac rehabilitation and the length of hospital stay has decreased.
Professor Felicity Astin
University of Huddersfield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Lifestyle change after elective percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty: an Australian perspective, Journal of Clinical Nursing, December 2006, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2006.01598.x.
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