Walker County Cardiac Rehabilitation

Dynamic Health Solutions from Huntsville Memorial Hospital

Cardiac rehabilitation is a medically supervised program to help heart patients recover quickly and improve their overall physical, mental and social functioning. The goal is to stabilize, slow or even reverse the progression of cardiovascular disease, thereby reducing the risk of heart disease, another cardiac event or death.

At Huntsville Memorial Hospital, we know the challenges cardiovascular patients face as they approach their recovery and strive to return to their everyday lives. We provide engaging, comprehensive cardiac rehabilitation programs that give these patients the resources, guidance, and strength to make the fullest recovery possible.

Our cardiac rehabilitation programs include:

• Counseling so the patient can understand and manage the disease process
• Beginning an exercise program
• Counseling on nutrition

Helping the patient modify risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, high blood cholesterol, physical inactivity, obesity, and diabetes.

• Providing vocational guidance to enable the patient to return to work
• Supplying information on physical limitations
• Lending emotional support
• Counseling on appropriate use of prescribed medications

Fostering the Well-Being of Our Patients

Rehabilitation is only as effective as a patient's commitment to getting better. There is strong evidence to suggest that there are other things patients should do during their rehabilitation that can dramatically improve their recovery. These include improving the plasma lipid and lipoprotein profile with diet, exercise, and drug therapy. Quitting smoking is always encouraged and highly advised, as well.

Cardiac rehabilitation is often prescribed to patients who have suffered:

• Heart attack
• Congestive heart failure
• Coronary artery bypass graft surgery
• PTCA (balloon angioplasty)
• Angina Pectoris (chest pain caused by clogged heart arteries)
• Stable chronic heart failure
• Various forms of cardiovascular disease
• Pacemaker implantation

Our rehabilitation team will devise an exercise program tailored to the specific patient's needs. Often this exercise will be accompanied by ECG monitoring to check on the heart's performance during physical activity. These types of programs, combined with appropriate lifestyle changes, have proven to be effective in dramatically improving the health and well-being of cardiovascular patients.

The Cardiac Rehabilitation Team

Working with the team is an important part of cardiac rehab and completing a program requires a significant term commitment from both the patient and their health care providers. Huntsville Memorial Hospital provides doctors (such as a family doctor, a heart specialist, and a surgeon), exercise specialists, occupational and physical therapists, nutritionists, and psychologists and other mental health specialists so that they may all support these patients and contribute to their recovery at this critical time.

Your health, Our community, Our commitment. For more information on Cardiac Rehabilitation at Huntsville Memorial Hospital, call (936) 291-4594.