Heart patients may benefit from cardiac rehabilitation (rehab) programs even more when stress management is added, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation.
“Cardiac rehabilitation programs do not routinely offer stress management, but this may change should demand increase. And because patients may be reluctant to ask for the programs themselves, the onus is on the physicians to recognize that stress management is important for the optimal medical management of patients,” said James A. Blumenthal, Ph.D., professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.
After a median follow up of more than three years, researchers found that patients who underwent cardiac rehab plus stress management achieved greater benefits than rehab alone. Cardiac events such as heart attack, stroke, recurrent chest pains requiring hospitalization, or even death were observed in:
- 18 percent of patients in the rehab plus stress management group;
- 33 percent of patients in the cardiac rehab only group; and
- 47 percent of patients in those who had no rehab.
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