A new study has found that an intervention delivered in a
primary care setting aimed at getting patients at risk for heart disease to
increase their physical activity and improve their diet improves quality of
life and is highly cost-effective compared with standard care.
"Extensive and intensive lifestyle intervention
programs delay the onset of diabetes mellitus and reduce cardiovascular risk by
increasing physical activity, reducing overweight and making changes in dietary
habits," the authors said.
Researchers assessed the effect on quality of life and the
cost-effectiveness of a three-year lifestyle intervention program among 151 men
and women at moderate to high risk of cardiovascular disease visiting a primary
care center in northern Sweden.
After six patients withdrew, 71 were randomly assigned to
the intervention, which included progressive exercise training three times a
week, diet counseling and regular group meetings. After an initial three-month
intervention period, participants were invited to attend group meetings at
regular intervals and encouraged to maintain at least 30 minutes per day of
physical activity. The control group (74 individuals) was given verbal and written
information about exercise and diet at one group meeting.
Differences between the two groups, intervention group and
control group, over the three-year period were observed on most of the
quality-of-life measurements taken.
The average number of visits to the family physician
decreased by 0.28 per six months among individuals in the intervention group,
whereas individuals in the control group made an average of 0.10 more visits
per six months. This resulted in a savings of 384 dollars for health care use
and a net savings of 47 dollars per intervention participant.
"These results should be viewed in the context of the
favorable impact on physical activity, fitness, waist circumference,
waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure and smoking cessation over the three-year
period," says the research.
Hence, the study concludes that high-intensity and
long-lasting interventions can produce sustainable improvements in quality of
life and can obviously be cost-effective.
The report appears in the September 13 issue of Archives
of Internal Medicine , one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Source: ANI, Times Of India, Yahoo Buzz,
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