Tag: Dr. Sharonne Hayes

Failure to refer: why are doctors ignoring cardiac rehab?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 25 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Anne-Marie felt nervous after she was discharged from hospital following triple bypass surgery. She had only her immediate family to help her at home. And as she described:

“I felt like I fell through the cracks. When I left the hospital, my husband was given a sick woman in a wheelchair and a big bag of pills. I had heard about cardiac rehabilitation, so I followed up to see if I could join a program as I thought this could help me get back on my feet.

“But I was told they would get back to me. When they finally did – 15 weeks after my operation – I was already back at work, so couldn’t attend. I wasn’t offered any other alternative.”

When the British Heart Foundation’s National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation report was published, a blunt analysis by their auditors concluded that “cardiac rehabilitation remains a Cinderella service.” 

But the grim reality is hardly less Cinderella-ish on this side of the pond. And the reason so many freshly-diagnosed heart patients like Anne-Marie are falling through the cracks lies squarely with the doctors who are failing to refer their patients to cardiac rehab. Continue reading “Failure to refer: why are doctors ignoring cardiac rehab?” →

How gender bias threatens women’s health

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

I attended the 64th annual Canadian Cardiovascular Congress not as a participant, but with media accreditation in order to report on the proceedings for my blog readers.  I arrived at the gorgeous Vancouver Convention Centre feeling excited to interview as many of the cardiac researchers attending this conference as I could squeeze into my 2-day schedule – particularly all the ones studying women’s heart disease.  I was gobsmacked, however, when conference organizers in the Media Centre told me on my first day that, out of hundreds of cardiology papers being presented that year, I’d be able to “count on one hand” the number of those studies that had anything even remotely to do with the subject of women and heart disease. Essentially, that appalling gender gap then became the Big Story of the conference for me. And every one of those four lonely little studies shared a conclusion that I already knew: when it comes to heart disease, women fare worse than men do.*  See also: The Sad Reality of Women’s Heart Disease Hits Home.

But already, I can tell that this weekend’s annual Congress (once again back in Vancouver) should do better.  This year, the 192-page conference program lists over a dozen studies reporting specifically on women’s experience of heart disease.(1)  Sounds good – until you remember that it’s a puny drop in the bucket for an international conference where over 500 original new scientific papers are being presented about a diagnosis that has killed more women than men every year since 1984. Continue reading “How gender bias threatens women’s health” →

Cardiac care for the whole patient – not just the heart

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 17 Comments

A serious medical crisis can yank you unceremoniously right out of your normal game and hip check you into the boards, leaving you metaphorically bruised and literally traumatized. The freshly-diagnosed wear a familiar look – that look which seems to ask plaintively:

“What the hell just happened to me, and what’s going to happen next?”

But it’s often a delayed question, surfacing only after the most serious part of a health crisis has been survived, finally allowing reality about what’s just happened to you to sink in.  

Continue reading “Cardiac care for the whole patient – not just the heart” →

“Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters           .  

When Edward Davies was with the British Medical Journal, he attended the Lown Institute conference in Boston, where he was reminded of some unlikely wisdom from boxer Mike Tyson. In the run up to a big fight, he explained, Iron Mike was being bombarded with media questions about how he intended to deal with his powerful challenger. Did he have a strategy?  What was his plan? The boxer’s response was simple:

“Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

In boxing terms, as Davies wrote in the BMJ, this is completely literal sound advice, but as a figurative metaphor for life, it’s not bad, either:

“Listening to a patient panel here at the Lown Institute conference, I was reminded that this is a worldview that doctors might do well to remember.”

Most patients diagnosed with a life-altering diagnosis can readily identify with what that metaphorical punch in the mouth feels like.  Continue reading ““Everybody has plans ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”” →