What is Cardiac Rehabilitation?

Cardiac rehabilitation is a tertiary treatment programs conducted for the patients who have undergone cardiac surgeries especially bypass grafting or cardiac stenting or angioplasty. It is a program that is medically supervised in order to help the cardiac patients recover faster and improve their physical, social, mental, and overall health. It’s aim is to stabilize the condition of the patient or slowly reverse the progressiveness of the heart disease, and thus minimize the risk of another cardiac problem or the death of the patient. Cardiac rehabilitation is a program constituting of several things. It may include an exercise program for the cardiac patient, nutritional counseling, emotional support, vocational guidance, counseling regarding therapeutic regimen, etc Cardiac rehabilitation also helps the patient to reduce the risk of another cardiac event by controlling blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, smoking, and diabetes.

The successful completion of the cardiac rehabilitation is possible only with the help of the patient’s tolerance. He or she has to comply with the new style admitting that it is for their health and has to bring his power to normal level. Many physicians have proved that controlled lipid levels, diet, drug and exercise have brought many patients to their optimal condition. Those people who had controlled their bad habits by quitting alcohol habits, smoking etc have reduced their risk of another stroke, and sudden death when compared with those patients whom continued the same.

It is very essential that cardiac rehabilitation should be done by a skilled specialist. Cardiac rehabilitation is a good for a variety of causes; patients having congestive heart failure caused by the poor pumping of heart, angina pectoris, which results in chest pain, myocardial infarction or heart attack, coronary bypass grafting or heart surgery, PTCA or balloon angioplasty, patient with a pacemaker, heart transplant patients, chronic heart failures, and dysrhhythmias, peripheral vessel disease and patients with any other cardiac disease. Even though an exercise program is included, it is not the same for all patients. It is specially designed for each patient’s condition and needs. Exercise should not be an overload to the patient, but it should help the patient to get relief from the difficulties of the disease. Exercises are done sometimes with ECG monitoring and sometimes without that.

Cardiac rehabilitation will help in increasing the functional capacity of the individual. It will improve the quality of life and will minimize the risk factors, by creating a feeling of goodness and optimism. But many of us will not know or bother about such a thing unless we face such a situation. Rehabilitation makes the patient as well as the family comfortable by providing them counseling and exercise sessions. They also provide health education to the patient so that the patient gets rid of all negative thoughts of being a useless being.

Another important query is when to start Cardiac rehabilitation. In fact it should be started immediately once you go to a hospital for any serious cardiac procedures like the angioplasty or even a surgery of your heart. The members of the rehabilitation team will come to see you in the ward to educate you, clarify your doubts, and will reduce your fear about this therapy.

They will provide you all the necessary advice to release the tension of your disease, and will give you all necessary details regarding the recovery, and about returning to the routine activities. Once you leave the hospital you can join the rehabilitation program soon after one to two months.

Cardiac rehabilitation involves good commitment and co-ordination of the health workers as well as patients. The rehabilitation team consists of cardiac specialists, junior doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, nutritionists, occupational therapists, psychologists, mental health specialists, etc the interaction between the patient and the team members is very essential. The patient could share their feelings, doubts, queries, and also their positive and negative thoughts with the team members. The team members will help the patient to get stabilized and feel better emotionally.