Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to N K Wenger.
Recent reports of "sex bias" in the management of heart disease serves to focus on a more fundamental problem. Too little is known about the biology of heart disease in women or the reasons for striking differences in women's risks, prognosis, and treatment outcome--medical or surgical. Studies more sharply focused on these issues could improve treatment for half of the patient population.
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The current worldwide explosive increase in the numbers of older persons is unprecedented in history. In the 1990s and beyond, the preponderance of patients with cardiovascular illness will be elderly, with a substantial subset among the frail elderly, 85 years old and older. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death and disability in this population, and cardiovascular risk increases steadily with age. Pascal defined old age as "just a time that is farther from the beginning and nearer to the end." Elderly persons, with and without cardiovascular disease, vary widely in their physical, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional functioning; severity of illness; and expectations from medical care. The challenge to the clinical and research communities alike is to delineate the appropriate components of preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic care for elderly cardiac patients in our society, interventions that are likely to relieve suffering, restore function so as to limit disability and dependency, and maintain a dignified and meaningful life-style for the end years of life. Major societal strides have been made in redefining both the onset of old age and its limitations. The eighteenth century poet, Robert Burns, wrote of his fears that he would be 45 years old at a time when life expectancy was 40 years; he saw himself as being weary, wrinkled, creeping, and joyless. For, ance that five-and-forty's speel'd, See crasy, weary, joyless Eild, Wi' wrinkled face, Comes hostin', hirplin', owre the field, Wi' creepin' pace. Burns died at the age of 37 years. A more attractive option is offered by Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1907-1972. According to all the standards we employ ... the aged person is condemned as inferior. ... Conditioned to operating as a machine for making and spending money, with all other relationships dependent upon its efficiency, the moment the machine is out of order and beyond repair, one begins to feel like a ghost without a sense of reality. ... Regarding himself as a person who has outlived his usefulness, he feels as if he has to apologize for being alive. May I suggest that ... old age be regarded not as the age of stagnation but as the age of opportunities for inner growth. ... The years of old age ... are indeed formative years, rich in possibilities to unlearn the follies of a lifetime, to see through inbred deceptions, to deepen understanding and compassion, to widen the horizon of honesty, to refine the sense of fairness.
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The majority of US patients with clinical evidence of coronary heart disease are elderly. Appropriately prescribed and designed exercise training can improve physical and psychologic functional status and encourage maintenance of an independent life-style. Exercise testing, in addition to helping identify elderly coronary patients at high risk of recurrent events who warrant added therapies, can guide the recommendations for their exercise regimen.
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Aspects of outcome that require assessment in chronic cardiovascular illness include the total consequences of both the illness and its management. Quality of life in the medical care context, addresses the resultant comfort, sense of well-being and life satisfaction; the maintenance of reasonable physical, emotional, and intellective function; and the ability to participate in valued activities in the family, workplace, and community. Factors reinforcing the validity of considering quality of life attributes relate to the contemporary marked increase in the prevalence of chronic cardiovascular illness. In chronic illness, the therapies administered are not curative but are rather designed to limit the disabling consequences of the disease; the perceptions of patients about their resultant health status thus have clinical relevance. Next is that patients, as enlightened consumers, increasingly seek information about the options available to them for treatments for chronic cardiovascular disease, with their queries relating both to the biomedical (morbidity and mortality) outcomes and to the psychosocial (life quality) outcomes. Finally, quality of life attributes are increasingly examined in evaluating the cost effectiveness of cardiovascular care, in addition to morbidity and mortality data; determining features involve the resultant functional independence of the individual as a result of care, productivity, return to remunerative work, and level of life satisfaction.
Exercise training is an important component of rehabilitative care for patients following myocardial infarction or myocardial revascularisation procedures. Participation of the patient in supervised exercise training, however, is not always practical, and home exercise training may be a reasonable alternative for low-risk patients. The relatively routine predischarge exercise test, performed for risk stratification, can identify low-risk patients and guide their exercise prescription during the early weeks at home. Advantages of home exercise training include increased availability and convenience and lower cost. Comparable improvements in functional capacity have been documented to result from home exercise and supervised group programmes. Drawbacks, however, involved the limited ability to teach patients the necessary safety precautions for exercise, the lack of opportunity to teach and encourage modification of coronary risk-related behaviours and lifestyles, and the lack of peer support. Several techniques have been proposed to overcome some limitations of home exercise and to encourage long-term adherence to the exercise regimen. Among these are telephone interaction between patients and nurses or other health professionals, transtelephonic exercise ECG recording, and the use of home exercise training videocassette. Comparative studies of the safety, efficacy, and costs of these approaches are needed; and means must be devised to provide the nonexercise-related information and counselling available to coronary patients in a supervised exercise setting.
Assessment of functional capacity, of ability and disability among patients with cardiovascular disease raises a number of problems and issues for which there are currently only imperfect or incomplete answers. Emphasis must be placed on the lack of predictable relationship of anatomic abnormality and functional abnormality. For example, the percentage obstruction of the coronary artery documents the anatomic extent of the disease, rather than the limitation of functional capacity; the same lack of predictive value characterizes the decrease in resting ventricular ejection fraction. The response to a challenge of activity or exertion currently appears to offer the optimal method of assessing functional capacity for work, although a brief continuous exercise test may not be the optimal exercise protocol by which to evaluate endurance. As an example, in our laboratory, comparing a low-level continuous exercise test protocol with one with an intermittent exercise design (i.e., periods of exercise alternating with periods at rest), patients typically can perform at least one additional stage of exercise on the discontinuous or intermittent test protocol. This occurred without significant differences in the final heart rate, blood pressure, or rate-pressure product, probably because most patients so tested were limited not by myocardial ischemia but by musculoskeletal problems, fatigue, or dyspnea (8). An unmet need is a comparison of exercise test protocols for the assessment of functional capacity, possibly the development of new test protocols for patients with limited functional capacity, and the evaluation of the relationship of these test data to eight hours of occupational activity in the workplace setting. It appears logical that a diagnostic exercise test should differ from one designed to determine functional capacity, but the results of a variety of exercise test protocols should be compared with the actual physical activity able to be performed in the workplace, as well as with reported symptoms. It should be defined whether testing is to be performed on optimal medical therapy, which I believe should be the case; or whether the technique used for diagnostic exercise testing, that of the minimal medication possible, is to be employed. Next, the time after surgical intervention or following a prolonged hospitalization at which to test should be delineated in that the deconditioning effect of immobilization may substantially decrease effort tolerance, unrelated to the severity of the underlying cardiovascular disease. Finally, should exercise rehabilitation be recommended or required before testing for cardiovascular impairment; major improvement in functional capacity has occurred in previously sedentary patients with a variety of cardiovascular diseases, including those with important manifestations of myocardial ischemia and ventricular dysfunction.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
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