Community-Based Rehab Helped Asian Heart Disease Patients

A new study highlights the effectiveness of community-based cardiovascular prevention among Asian patients.

AsianScientist (Sep. 3, 2013) – A study from the National University of Singapore has highlighted the effectiveness of community-based cardiovascular prevention in Asian patients.

With a growing incidence of cardiovascular disease in Asia, lifestyle modifications such as weight loss and routine exercise play an important role in early primary cardiovascular disease prevention.

The cardiac rehabilitation study, led by Assistant Professor Joanne Yeh Chang of the Department of Pharmacy at the NUS Faculty of Science, was a collaboration with the Singapore Heart Foundation to assess the overall wellness improvement of more than 200 local patients who underwent a structured, community-based cardiac rehabilitation program.

A total of 207 local patients participated in the program for a period of 12 months, from 2010 to 2011, at the Singapore Heart Foundation. The patients included those with certain cardiac risk factors and those who had an underlying cardiac disease but were deemed as stable by the patients’ physicians.

Participants went through a personalized series of exercise programs, nutritional reviews, smoking cessation programs and psycho-social counselling. Core components such as baseline vitals (i.e. heart rate and blood pressure), body weight, body fat, and exercise tolerance were measured.

At the end of the program, participants were found to have an overall reduction of 0.8 percent in body fat, 12 percent of LDL cholesterol reduction, and 4.6 percent improvement in total cholesterol levels. Patients also showed overall improvement in exercise tolerance and stamina with the ability to walk 10.7 meters longer than their baseline.

The team is now expanding its study to conduct a controlled trial targeting 1,000 patients over a period of five years.

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Source: NUS; Photo: SummerTomato/Flickr/CC.
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