CONCLUSION
Coronary artery disease continues to be one of the most common health problems in the United States and around the globe. Great strides are being made in understanding how to prevent and treat CAD. Treatment outcomes are also improving, which means that more patients are now living with CAD. Therefore, it is vital for all healthcare professionals to understand the key components of managing CAD. Patient, family, and community education is essential to promote further improvement in the managing CAD and treatment outcomes.
Prevention of CAD begins with understanding individual risk factors and implementing therapeutic lifestyle changes. Weight loss, improved diet, medications, smoking cessation, prevention of inflammation, and regular physical exercise are the elements of the initial treatment program. Drugs and interventional procedures are used to treat those components of CAD that do not improve sufficiently with therapeutic lifestyle changes alone.
Patients with CAD are managed by a multidisciplinary team to assure that they have success in treating, managing, and living with the best quality of life and outcomes possible. Cardiac rehabilitation is an evidence-based program that optimizes the most recent research to inform patients, families, and healthcare workers how to treat cardiac patients with CAD, after an MI, and after a CABG to provide them with the most active and healthy life possible.
If conservative medical management does not suffice to treat CAD adequately, more invasive methods are available. A percutaneous coronary intervention, drug-emitting stent, or a coronary artery bypass graft surgery may be warranted.
RESOURCES
American College of Cardiology
CAD prevention and disease management (Cleveland Clinic)
Cardiovascular diseases (World Health Organization)
Coronary artery disease/coronary heart disease (American Heart Association)
Coronary artery disease (CDC)
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