Importance Of Preventive Heart Care Program

By Author: Pratiksha G Gandhi
Total Articles: 2
Comment this article

As the saying goes, “prevention is better than cure,” preventive care focuses on keeping people healthy by way of regular health check-ups, guided diet plans, education to promote healthy habits and prescribed clinical or out-patient tests.

Preventive heart care or cardiac care ensures health and longevity. The need is for a comprehensive heart care program that includes sustained individual risk reduction counselling to support healthy lifestyles and prevents heart disease and stroke.

From an organizational perspective, a comprehensive heart care program means to assist high-risk individuals to become healthier and more productive employees, with substantial savings to the health plan and the company’s bottom line.

Facts about heart diseases & strokes:

1. In US, in the year 2005 the cost of heart disease and stroke was estimated at $393.5 billion. Due to aging baby boomers heart disease costs are expected to rise phenomenally by 2010.

2. Heart disease are the leading causes for deaths in US, accounting for ...
... 40% of all deaths.

3. Employees with multiple heart disease and stroke risk factors – high blood pressure, high cholesterol, tobacco smoking, lack of exercise, poor nutrition and high stress will cost employees more money in terms of health care, and results in absenteeism, lower productivity than employees with one or none of these risk factors.

As it is understood that, heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death and disability, and a source of major costs to individuals and organizations.

Preventive heart care takes two different forms: One that is based on training and support programs to prolong life and reduce the risk of heart disease, and second, availing multiple health check facilities as clinical or out-patient services, especially to prevent or detect heart disease at an early stage.

As part of the preventive heart care, scheduled exercise sessions each month, nutritional counselling to reduce cardiac risk and maintain healthy weight, and periodic stress management and relaxation sessions are prescribed for patients. Case management with progress reports of each patient are sent to the referring physicians.

The clinical or outpatient services that aim to achieve preventive heart care include physiological screening, heart rate variability assessment, treatment for CAD risk reduction, Hemogram, Biochemical Parameters, Lipid profile, Liver function tests, General tests and Cardiac Tests.

The Cardiac Tests that include Cardiac Stress Analysis (CSA/TMT), Pulmonary Function Test (PFT), Diet Counselling, Echo Cardiogram, and Cardiac Consultation are considered a primary to achieve preventive heart care.

Preventive heart care is a healthy cardiac care program that includes regular heart check-ups, guided diet plans and maintaining healthy lifestyles. To know more details about healthy cardiac check-up programs, visit our website IPC heart care centre.