Heart alarm fails to shake lifestyles
Tuesday February 17th, 2015
Only 50% of smokers who have heart attacks give up the habit after their illness, according to the disturbing findings of a European study published today.
Researchers
said most heart patients failed to achieve targets for improving their
lifestyle and taking therapies.
And health services, in turn, are failing to give patients support to do this or access to rehabilitation services, according to the European Society of Cardiology.
London expert Dr Kornelia Kotseva said the findings were "very disappointing."
Researchers studied more than 16,000 sets of medical records and interviewed nearly 8,000 coronary patients for the study, involving 78 centres in 24 countries in 2012 and 2013.
They found that just 20% of smokers were referred to smoking cessation clinics - and most failed to take this up.
Just 40% managed at least 20 minutes of moderate exercise weekly.
Most patients were overweight or obese and many had no plans to lose weight, they found.
There were also problems with control of cholesterol and glucose levels, the researchers write in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology today.
Dr Kotseva, who chaired a steering committee for the project, Euroaspire IV, at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, said: "A large majority of coronary patients do not achieve the guideline standards for secondary prevention with high prevalences of persistent smoking, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and consequently most patients are overweight or obese with a high prevalence of diabetes.
"Risk factor control is inadequate despite high reported use of medications and there are large variations in secondary prevention practice between centres.”
Fellow researcher Professor David Wood said: "Acute intervention should always be followed by prevention."
Kotseva K, Wood D, De Bacquer D, et al. EUROASPIRE IV: A European Society of Cardiology survey on the lifestyle, risk factor and therapeutic management of coronary patients from 24 European countries. Eur J Prevent Cardiol 17 February 2015; doi: 10.1177/2047487315569401
Tags: Diet & Food | Drug & Alcohol Abuse | Europe | Fitness | Heart Health
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