Positive Health Online

Abstract

APPELS and colleagues, Department of Medical Psychology Maastricht University, The Netherlands write that restenosis (re-narrowing of the arteries) following successful coronary angioplasty (PTCA) occurs in 25-35% of all PTCA patients. A number of psychological factors, including anger and vital exhaustion increase the risk of new cardiac events following PTCA, suggesting that behavioural intervention techniques could reduce the risk of restenosis. The authors conducted a feasibility study of angioplasty patients who remained exhausted following PTCA. @m: 30 patients participated in the intervention programme, which used breath therapy 65 patients acted as controls. The intervention and control groups of patients were followed for an average of 16 and 18 months respectively. @r: Compared with the controls, the breath therapy intervention resulted in a significant decrease of mean exhaustion scores and reduced the risk by 50% of a new coronary event - cardiac death, coronary artery bypass grafting, heart attack, rePTCA and restenosis. @c: These results demonstrate that a clinical trial to test the hypothesis that reduction of vital exhaustion and hostility reduces the risk of a new cardiac event following PTCA is feasible and worthy of further research efforts.

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References

Appels A et al. The effect of a psychological intervention program on the risk of a new coronary event after angioplasty: a feasibility study. J Psychosom Res 43(2): 209-17. Aug 1997. @w:COMMENTS: This is an extremely important and quite outstanding result that breath therapy could reduce by 50% the risk of having a new heart attack or even dying from heart failure. Previous issues of Positive Health have reported the success of breath therapy in reducing asthmatic attacks. It is almost too simple that watchful breathing can be so life-saving, but I certainly hope that this result will be taken up by medical clinicians in coronary intensive units.