- Experts say healthy lifestyle choices can help quality of life in the years following a heart attack.
- Being active, even for short periods, as well as a healthy diet and stress reduction can help.
- Having a support system can also help decrease your recovery time.
Having a heart attack doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a productive and satisfying life in the years following the event.
According to a self-reported survey completed in Denmark, people who have had a heart attack reported a high quality of life 20 years after their incident.
Researchers said the results are comparable to the general Danish population.
The researchers examined the answer provided by 2,552 people who survived a heart attack and completed a self-reported survey on their quality of life.
They reported that long-term health quality of life was consistently high, even 20 years after a cardiac event. The researchers say the findings suggest the need for resources to improve survival rates after a heart attack.
The findings were published in the journal
Non-study author Dr. Lawrence Phillips, director of outpatient cardiology at NYU Langone Heart and an associate professor in the Department of Medicine in the Leon H. Charney Division of Cardiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York, told Medical News Today:
“I find it to be a really interesting study — it’s looking at patients who are survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest who respond to survey tools to look at quality of life. And what they found is that of the people who respond to the survey, their long-term quality of life metrics was similar to the general population. And so, the big question that it answers is, how do patients do once they survive an out of hospital cardiac arrest? Is their quality of life as a total group stunted or like the general population? And [the study] showed that it was similar to the general population.”
In the United States, the overall rate of death from heart…
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