Heart disease or Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death in the world. It is important to know when and whom you should consult to avoid heart disease and its complications.
There is a medical field that devotes to preventing heart disease which is known as Preventive Cardiology.
What is preventive cardiology?
Preventive cardiology focuses on lowering the risk of the patients developing a heart disease and preventing further heart-related problems of the person with a history of cardiovascular disease and who already experienced a heart attack or stroke.
Some of the basic information that you must know from this emerging field:
There are two types of patients that usually consult a preventive cardiologist.
— The first types are those who want to know their cardiovascular risk of having a heart attack. They usually prefer to check with the cardiologist if one of their family members had a heart attack before. It will also help the preventive cardiologist to assess and reduce your risk of the disease.
— The second group are those who have experienced a cardiovascular problem in the past and want to prevent it from happening again.
Preventive cardiologist looks at the personal risk by going through the detailed history of the individual and makes a proper plan or steps to avoid the risk of heart disease for the specific person. It includes making a diet plan to pinpointing their habits to help them control their heart health.
The patient should spit out all the family history, diet, and lifestyle habits to determine the risk factors of your heart health. The patients must take a full physical check and blood tests, including the cholesterol test.
ECG or an electrocardiogram is another test that measures the heart’s electrical activity. ECGs are done if there is a breathing problem, chest pain and irregular heartbeat which helps to determine the root cause of the symptoms.
Stress test is also taken to understand the heartbeats during physical activity. This test asks the patient to walk and jog on a treadmill while being hooked up to a machine simultaneously to record their heart’s activity.
A coronary calcium scan is usually done on patients who don’t have any symptoms of heart disease but might be at risk of getting it. This test checks the calcium form in the coronary arteries.
Preventive cardiologists also recommend medication, specifically statins, to reduce to the risk of a heart attack. People with a family history of heart attack, stroke, or peripheral artery disease or a personal history of cardiovascular disease should consider consulting a Preventive Cardiologist.
There are many factors that cause heart disease which can be controlled to prevent heart disease and its complications are High blood pressure, High blood sugar or diabetes, Obesity, Smoking, Unhealthy diet, and lifestyle.