Change of heart

Many Australian men and women are missing the message that treatment for heart attack is not a cure for heart disease, according to the National Heart Foundation of Australia.

According to the Foundation’s chief executive, Dr Lyn Roberts, people need to adopt a healthy lifestyle and maintain regular reviews with their doctor to prevent a repeat heart attack.

“Really, that’s a message for people who are at risk of having a heart attack, as well as those who have had one,” she added.

Death rates from heart attacks in Australia have dropped by 39% during the past decade, according to the latest figures from the National Heart Foundation of Australia. However, Dr Roberts claimed these high survival rates meant more people were living with heart damage and disability after their heart attack.

The statistics, released this week, show between 2001 and 2011 the number of deaths dropped dramatically from 14,443 men and women in 2001 to 9,811 men and women in 2011.

In Victoria, the death rate dropped by the exact same percentage – 39% – between 2001 and 2011, while the ACT saw the most significant drop of 60%, compared to the Northern Territory that only dropped 28% during the 10 year period.

Across Australia in 2011, 55,000 people were hospitalised because of a heart attack – half of these due to a repeat cardiac event.

“Cardiac rehabilitation is designed to help heart disease and heart attack patients return to an active and satisfying life and lowers the risk of a second heart attack,” Dr Roberts said.

“It includes physical activity, health education, counselling, behaviour modification strategies and support for self management.”

She added it was a timely reminder that governments should do more to fund cardiac rehabilitation services across the country.

“While cardiac rehabilitation programs exist for patients after a heart attack, these are short term programs (lasting only a few weeks) and are used by less than a third of heart attack survivors,” she said.

“These programs are haphazard and largely rely on hospitals or health services to fund and run.

“If governments stepped up to better fund and support cardiac rehab services, more heart attack survivors would benefit, and even less Australians would suffer unnecessary health effects, or die because of heart attack,” she added.

For more information about cardiac rehabilitation, visit www.heartfoundation.org.au