Studies
show that when people are diagnosed with heart disease,
some want lots of information about their illness, and
others just don’t want to think about it too much.
Many people are eager to understand treatments and participate
in decisions about their own health; others may prefer
to ‘leave it to the doctor’. How much you want
to know and how much you need to understand depends on
you, there is no right or wrong way to feel.
- If
you want to lower your risk of heart
attack and improve your quality of
life, you need to take a number of
steps.
- The
first step in taking control of your
health is self-education: learning
about heart disease and about the treatment
options available to you.
- Educational
material on this site is a direct result
of our editors’ 30 years experience
working with, teaching, and talking
to many of the world’s leading
cardiologists
- Much
of the content on Angioplasty.Org is
also a direct result of comments we’ve
received from our patient community.
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But if you want to lower
your risk of heart attack and improve your quality of
life, you need to take a number
of steps, from taking daily medications to changing your
diet, exercising and reducing stress. If you’ve come
to this website you (or your family member) have probably
been prescribed diagnostic tests and possibly treatments
like angioplasty to improve blood flow to your heart.
More Education = Better Health Outcomes
You will do better at making lifestyle changes and dealing
with tests and treatments, if you actively participate
in your own recovery. Regardless of how deeply you want
to delve into the science, you will likely feel more
motivated to make changes, more positive about the future,
and more comfortable during treatment, if you learn something
about the disease, what to expect during treatment and
what you can do to feel better.
Coronary artery disease,
arteriosclerosis, is a chronic illness. It develops slowly,
probably as a result of multiple
factors and it is not ‘curable’, although there
are studies that indicate that the biological effects of
the disease may be reversible.
We know for sure that for most people the progress of
the disease can slowed, the symptoms reduced, and your
energy, comfort and well-being can be restored.
You can live a healthy life with heart disease if you
take positive steps to manage your health. And, the first
step of taking control is self-education: learning about
heart disease and about the treatment options available
to you.
Different Levels of Depth to Meet the Needs of Different
Patients
At Angioplasty.Org we seek to make available several levels
of information, so that you can find what you need and
gain the level of involvement in treatment decision-making
that will make you most comfortable.
We publish everything from a basic introduction to heart
tests and treatments, to articles giving patients open
access to listen in on and learn from technical conversations
and controversies among pioneering cardiology researchers.
The educational material
on this site is a direct result of our editors’ 30
years of experience working with, teaching, and talking
to many of the world’s leading
cardiologists. But much of the content on Angioplasty.Org
is also a direct result of comments we’ve received
from our patient community. So, talk to us. We urge our
readers to let us know what kind of educational material,
articles and tools you’d like to see more of, and
we promise to respond.
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