118,500 New Zealanders now suffer from angina

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More patient help needed for heart disease sufferers
118,500 New Zealanders now suffer from angina...

A leading British cardiac researcher touring New Zealand says people afflicted with heart disease will have a better chance of survival if they receive evidence-based support.

Dr Gill Furze believes heart disease patients benefit from more structured support as it increases life expectancy by helping them improve their health behaviours and learn how to best manage their angina. More than 100,000 New Zealanders now suffer from angina.

“Without this support it is more likely that a sizeable proportion of people will not stick to their medication and will continue to have risky behaviours like continuing to smoke, not doing enough exercise and resting too much, which ultimately cancels out the benefits of medical therapy,” says Dr Furze.

“There is evidence that good angina self-management not only improves physical activity and diet but can reduce the amount of angina that people report. There is also strong evidence that people are being offered interventions like angioplasty and stent when they have stable heart disease with few symptoms. In these people angioplasty does not save lives and may do harm.

“That’s why it is so important that people who have stable angina are provided the medical support to learn how to best manage their condition.”

Dr Furze, a Senior Research Fellow with the British Heart Foundation Care and Education Research Group, says the clinical pathway for people with stable angina is currently under consideration in United Kingdom. She says some districts have ruled that such candidates with few symptoms should have optimal medical therapy for at least three months and only those who continue to have symptoms should be considered for angioplasty.

“Whether that would cross over into New Zealand I can’t say. All I am showing on this visit are some of the programmes underway in the UK and the rationale for those. But as I talk to people in New Zealand, I find that you are facing similar issues here.

“That is, you need to be smarter how you spend your scarce health dollars by only providing interventions where there is a sound evidence base.“

A staggering 118,500 New Zealanders are believed to suffer from angina - which is chest pain when exercising or when emotionally upset, and a leading sign of advanced heart disease, while over 11,000 New Zealanders die from cardiovascular related disease annually – and the number is climbing.

“As the population of people with chronic illnesses such as heart disease increases worldwide, there needs to be growing emphasis on helping people to self-manage their illness and I know that the Heart Foundation is very pro-active in New Zealand in this domain,” says Dr Furze.

“Many health professionals now incorporate skills such as goal setting or action planning into programmes aimed at promoting effective self-management in their patients and while these skills are necessary, they are not enough.

“People with long-term conditions often have misconceptions about what caused their condition to develop and how they should best manage it. Misconceptions like the fact some people think that angina is a mini-heart attack must be targeted to ensure a better quality of life for those individuals – and because it is a better use of scarce health dollars,” she says.

Dr Furze is touring New Zealand in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the Heart Foundation. She is in Wellington until Friday and in Auckland on June 15 and 16.

ENDS

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