Together with the International Council of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (ICCPR), Dr. Sherry Grace from York, and Dr. Karam Turk-Adawi from Qatar University have created the first ever global registry for cardiovascular rehabilitation.
“We lead an international group of cardiac rehab providers, and they wanted a registry because there is so much heart disease in low-resource settings and so is a great need to increase programs, yet no way to recognize their quality and ensure the best patient outcomes in these settings,” says Dr. Grace.
The collaboration with Qatar and the ICCPR was created because “leaders in this area work at these places.” Dr. Grace continues, “We did partner as Qatar has only one cardiac rehabilitation program, so, again we are working to ensure more cardiac rehab across the eastern mediterranean where there is not enough.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally and that most CVDs can be prevented by addressing behavioural risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet, obesity, physical inactivity, and harmful use of alcohol.”
Even more alarming is the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s statistics that “each year, 100,000 people in Canada are diagnosed with heart failure and that half will die within five years.”
CVD actually refers to various conditions that affect the heart and isn’t necessarily a singular condition or illness with a singular cause — this is why both prevention and personalized ongoing outpatient programs that focus on everyday lifestyle and overall heart health tend to be the best and first solutions.
Rehabilitation programs that centre on everyday lifestyle, however, are notoriously difficult for doctors to track and patients to uphold, especially those that live in poverty or low-income areas. The registry was created to help combat these issues and to bring much needed resources to these areas “with access and equity being paramount considerations” and is designed to be a simple way to monitor and communicate patient health and program success and weakness.
“An international cardiac rehab registry is an efficacious idea since it enables doctors around the world to share patient progress and results. It will allow researchers to develop more effective treatments and detect risk factors,” says Ghazala Ayubi, a first-year global health student.
“There are about 35 variables and programs enter data on their patients anonymously pre-program, at the end of the rehab program, and then annually until the patient unfortunately passes away (which should be later because the patient went to cardiac rehab),” Dr. Grace explains.
“They can also view dashboards where there are 12 indicators and they can compare their program to all other programs anonymously,” Dr. Grace continues. “At the end of the program, programs give to patients a summary of the progress they made, and what they need to continue focusing on.”
In a statement to YFile last month, Dr. Karam Turk-Adawi of Qatar University pointed out that this registry enables international research, where they can “better understand the impact of cardiac rehab in countries where it has never been studied, long-term patient outcomes, what cardiac rehab practices are associated with better outcomes, and what quality improvement strategies work.”
