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Cardiac rehab may benefit oldest patients
Great news in this report but I want to start with my strongest message: why wait to exercise? If you live healthy as a young person, you will grow old gracefully and these problems may never happen to you!
What is a young person to Dr. Lane? How about 60?
The motto at Chiropractic Lane: “we can help you as long as you are on this side of the ground. When you are on the other side, the work gets harder”
Exercise-based rehabilitation programs for heart patients are tied to health benefits even among the most elderly, according to a new study.
Unfortunately, there are some people even now who believe (some patients are) too old to go into such programs. We don’t believe so. It’s quite the reverse. You do get a benefit from this.
So-called cardiac rehabilitation is often prescribed for patients who have had heart surgery or a major cardiac problem, such as a heart attack. It usually involves returning to the hospital several times a week for a few months for monitored exercise, taking medication to control heart-related risk factors and making lifestyle improvements.
Cardiac rehabilitation is probably the best kept secret in cardiovascular medicine today. It’s underutilized for those who are eligible for the program, and especially underutilized for older adults.
It’s estimated that only about 30 percent of eligible patients attend a cardiac rehab program.
Doctors are expected to refer patients to cardiac rehab, but very few people take advantage of it for a number of reasons, including difficulty traveling to the hospital regularly, a lack of insurance coverage or not understanding its benefits, Thomas told Reuters Health.
Patients’ exercise capacity, measured by the highest level of exertion they could achieve, also improved in both groups.
A metabolic equivalent (MET) score of three represents low or moderate intensity exercise, such as walking, while a score of five requires more exertion, such as with dancing.
The younger patients increased their exercise capacity to 5.1 points, on average, up from 2.7 at the beginning of the study.
The elderly patients went from a peak exertion of 2.2 points up to 3.2.
Although the improvements in exercise capacity among the very old were not as large as the gains seen among younger patients, they are still meaningful.
The elderly are more debilitated (which they don’t need to be if they lived a healthier lifestyle. Still, becoming ill is both a cause and an effect of lifestyle choices), so this very small improvement could make a real significant improvement in their quality of life and allow them to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do from a functional standpoint.
It’s a therapy that’s been absolutely proven to decrease mortality and to improve quality of life and improve functional capacity.
SOURCE: bit.ly/1bgS71a The American Journal of Cardiology, online July 8, 2013.
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