What are the possible treatments for coronary heart disease?
The treatment of patients with coronary heart disease should always start with lifestyle. That is we do the things we can do in terms of diet and physical activity to reduce our risk factors for coronary heart disease in simple ways, because those are important even if we are giving other treatments for coronary heart disease as well, that we might think of as more effective. We want to do those lifestyle things to treat coronary heart disease because they're an important base. And these treatments for coronary heart disease will include discussions with your physicians about what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, things like saturated fat. And in addition, what exercise is appropriate, what physical activity you can and should do. And your doctor will want you to be physically active too treat coronary heart disease. In addition your doctor will certainly prescribe medications as treatments for coronary heart disease. There is a set of medications that have all been demonstrated in separate large trials, to show that they can prolong life when used to treat people with coronary heart disease. Now of course, prolonging life; letting you live a long and healthy life is our ultimate goal. We also want your quality of life to be good. So we don't want you to have symptoms from your coronary heart disease, if we can avoid it. Some of the medications are used to treat symptoms of coronary heart disease, but many of them are actually to prolong your life. And sometimes, other procedures are needed to treat symptoms of coronary heart disease. So, angioplasty, coronary by-pass surgery, other procedures that will help open the arteries, and provide more blood flow to the heart are sometimes needed depending on your particular circumstances.
