HCM CITY — Cardiac rehabilitation, a medically supervised programme including exercises, should be provided to patients with heart problems for them to recover after surgery, a Japanese physical therapist has told a training workshop on cadiopulmonary exercise testing.

Cardiac rehabilitation helps stabilise, delay and slow down the progress of arteriosclerosis and the rate of re-hospitalisation and death among patients with cardiac diseases, Yuguchi Satoshi of the University of Health Sciences told the two-day event which started yesterday at the HCM City Hospital of Rehabilitation and Professional Diseases.

“It also helps control coronary risk factors, improve pulmonary function and quality of life, and reduce depression symptoms.”

Rehabilitation is divided into three phases, the first one for regaining body function and activities for daily living, the second one for recovery to return society, and the last to prevent recurrence, he said.

In the first and second phases patients are rehabilitated at hospitals, and could be asked to exercise at home in the third phase, he said.

Dr Đinh Quang Thanh, head of the physical therapy department at the hospital, told Việt Nam News that post-surgical cardiac rehabilitation had not been paid much attention in the country.

The hospital would soon start providing rehabilitation to patients having heart surgery at the HCM City Heart Institute and Chợ Rẫy Hospital.

Trần Trung Đệ, deputy head of the hospital, said cardiac rehabilitation was a new thing and his hospital would provide training for doctors in the south.

Last March Major General Nguyễn Hồng Sơn, head of the 175 Military Hospital in HCM City’s Gò Vấp District, had said the hospital was setting up a ward to provide rehabilitation as well as further treatment post-surgery for heart patients.

The ward would open in the second quarter this year, he said.

The Việt Nam National Heart Association has forecast that one fifth of the population will suffer from heart diseases and hypertension this year. —VNS