Category Archives: Patient Empowerment

September 18, 2012 · 8:42 pm

An Informed Patient is a Healthier Patient

Doctor and patientFindings in a report issued last week by the Blue Shield of California Foundation demonstrate that an informed patient is an empowered patient: one who feels more comfortable asking questions of one’s healthcare provider, and making decisions about one’s own healthcare.

While this equation may seem obvious, the report puts numbers to the equation, marking the significant differences between the informed and uninformed patient. Most importantly, the patient population studied consisted of low income families with annual household incomes less than 200% of the federal poverty level, or about $46,000 for a family of four. Continue reading →

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Filed under History, Patient Empowerment, Patient Experience, Patients, Shared Decision-Making

September 15, 2012 · 7:46 pm

Patient Alert: Don’t Take NSAIDs After a Heart Attack

NSAID tabletsA study from Denmark of almost 100,000 patients over a 12-year period has concluded that:

The use of NSAIDs is associated with persistently increased coronary risk regardless of time elapsed after first-time MI. We advise long-term caution in using NSAIDs for patients after MI.

The study, published online before print in Circulation is titled, “Long-Term Cardiovascular Risk of NSAID Use According to Time Passed After First-Time Myocardial Infarction: A Nationwide Cohort Study.”  The researchers looked at the nationwide registries of hospitalization and drug dispensing from pharmacies in Denmark for the years 1997-2009 and calculated the incidence of death and heart attack associated with NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) use up to five years after a heart attack (in one-year increments). Continue reading →

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Filed under Heart Attack, Patient Alert, Patient Empowerment, Patients, Risk Factors

January 17, 2012 · 10:15 pm

AAA Stent Graft Revisited

Kevin Morgan, aka FitOldDogLast year at this time, I wrote about a patient who had been posting in our Patient Forum. He had received a stent graft to treat an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and wanted to share his story, and also wanted to find other AAA patients. This type of aneurysm was previously only treatable via open surgery. But with advances in device technology, patients were able to receive a AAA stent graft percutaneously, through a catheter in the femoral artery (groin/leg) much like standard angioplasty. Continue reading →

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Filed under Patient Empowerment, Patient Experience, Patients, Social Networking

January 6, 2011 · 7:05 pm

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Stent Graft Athlete

Kevin One of the things about working at Angioplasty.Org that warms my heart (pun intended) is connecting with patients around the world. Our Patient Forum gets posts from the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, Poland, India, Iran, China, Chile and…North Carolina. That’s where Kevin Morgan lives and where he publishes his new blog, athletewithstent.com.

All too often, our Forum serves as a kind of complaint department — where patients write in about problems they are having after stents, angioplasty, angiograms, etc. They usually find our Forum through search engines like Google (e.g. look up “Stents Plavix Aspirin“). And these posts are important because on our Forum people can share stories and discover they are not alone. Continue reading →

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Filed under Patient Empowerment, Patients, Social Networking, Video