Literacy in cardiovascular disease prevention- Current Research: Cardiology

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Cardiovascular disease is the main cause of death worldwide. Although its impact is continuously decreasing in the richest countries since late 80’s, in the rest of the world the situation is quite different, showing an increase both in prevalence of disease as in specific death rates.

From the preventive point of view, the natural history of atherosclerosis starts early in the life at the primordial level by lifestyles’ options and continues as the risk factors appear and combine in a constellation of global cardiovascular risk that can cause an event. This knowledge about cardiovascular disease includes

This knowledge about cardiovascular disease includes the rigorous definition of the factors related to the risk of event, and the quantification of their impact, measured by the two complementary aspects: On one side, we have the increased likelihood of an event according the presence of the various risk factors, isolated or in association; On the other side, we prove that modelling each factor, as arterial hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking habits or diabetes, we can really lessen the cardiovascular disease, demonstrating the causal relationship.

The strategy for dealing with risk factors has gone for transforming risk factors in diseases and treat them aggressively with medications. Nowadays, we notice that this strategy is scant. Although the actual best medications cover a significant part of pathological pathways, their efficiency is compromised by salt and fat ingestion, overweight, physical inactivity, psychosocial determinants and smoking initiation. And, like for cardiovascular risk factors, we now have evidence for prescribing better food intake, more physical activity and an adequate psychological and social environment for primordial prevention of cardiovascular disease, aiming to prevent the ultimate goals (events), but also the intermediate ones (risk factors). However, if we did define the disease of arterial hypertension some years ago, we hardly can do the same for the disease of those who ingest great amounts of salt or fats, forcing to be creative when designing the strategies for achieving these objectives.

For more research information kindly go through the editorial published by Paulo Santos- Challenge of health literacy in cardiovascular disease prevention

Current Research: Cardiology (ISSN: 2368-0512), an OPEN ACCESS peer reviewed journal Indexed in: CNKI ,Open J-Gate which publishes original articles, reviews, case reports, clinical images related to cardiology, disorders of the heart, variety of cardiology and heart health topics, including hypertension, myocardial ischemia, diabetes and other cardiovascular disease. Interested authors can publish unique & interesting case reports to Journal.

 

 

Regards,

Emilie Rose

Journal coordinator

Current Research Cardiology