Heart Attacks in Elderly Population - Book Report/Review Example

Health science and medicine Topic: Heart attacks in elderly population Introduction Heart attack is a sudden severe instance of abnormal heart function also known as coronary failure or myocardial infarction. When blood vessels become chocked or clogged, blood supply to the other parts of the heart get ceased and that part awaiting nutrient and oxygen rich blood become deprived and begin to die. That is when people get a heart attack. Blockage of blood vessels is caused by several factors. Heart attack may be sudden but its causes are not. When years of unhealthy eating habits and poor lifestyle pool together with other factors, heart attack occurs unexpectedly any where any time. Lifestyle factors: smoking, lack of physical activities and consuming unhealthy diet such as saturated facts. Age is also a factor where people past 45 are more prone to getting heart attack. Some associated illnesses like angina, diabetes, hypertension and high blood cholesterol levels also contribute to heart attack. Being overweight that is obesity and previous heart surgery or heart attack also put the person on a high risk bracket. During a heart attack, when the person is about to or is having a heart attack, he experience pressure in the chest area, heaviness and the discomfort begins to radiate and spread towards the left shoulder, jaw and hand. The person feels extremely weak, anxious and short of breath and headache becomes irregular. Some people may get a “silent heart attack”, which means the above classical presentation and symptoms goes missing in them or they faint and it is common in diabetics. Longstanding sings are breathlessness on walking even short distances, breaking out in cold sweat on little exertion and heaviness. They usually go off on their own or get relieved by nitrate drugs like sorbitrate. Diagnosis of heart attack: there are tests carried out on the patient Chest x – ray to see if there is any swelling enlargement in the heart size, ECG to monitor the electrical activity of heart muscles and cardiac enzyme test to detect presence of certain enzymes that are released in blood when there is destruction in the heart muscles. Basic treatment: cardio- pulmonary resuscitation, manual chest compression if the patient has become unconscious. Hospital treatment: aspirin to thin the blood and stop clotting, thrombolytics are injected to dissolve any blood clot formed, defibrillator that is a medical device that sends electrical shock across the patient’s chest to bring back the normal electrical functioning of the heart. Prevention of heart attack in healthy persons: no tobacco and smoking, exercise at least 30 minutes a day, eating a healthy diet that is avoid greasy, heavy, fat laden stuff and get regular screening tests, not forgetting maintaining optimum body weight. Prevention from heart attack for people with heart ailments: lower blood pressure that keeps your pressure under normal limits, cholesterol where keeping the high density lipids high and low density lipids low is the key, reduce stress by being punctual, taking medicine and finally maintaining healthy lifestyle comprising of exercise and balanced diet. 1. Role of health educator Talking to the people and listening to their problems Finding reasons for people’s behavior Helping people see the reason for their actions Asking people to give their own ideas to solve their problems Helping people to look and understand their ideas so that they see which is the most useful in solving their problems 2. Principles of health education Community diagnosis Community participation and involvement Team work and collaboration Planning Monitoring and evaluation Community diagnosis Community is a group of people with common characteristics: may be positive or negative e.g. religious, drinking group or any common activity. Community diagnosis may be done through observations, asking relevant questions and visiting them to see the available resources if they are used correctly particularly for health reasons. The health habits of elderly persons should be checked in relation to heart attack risks and available resources for its management. Community participation It is a process by which individuals and family perceive responsibility for their own health as well as the welfare of the community. If people are involved in identifying their problems, implementing interventions, monitoring and evaluating the whole process then the service will be socially acceptable to them. People are more likely to value themselves and feel a sense of ownership if they were playing an active role. It is upon the elderly population to accept and practice the recommendations of the teachings of heart attack handling procedures elaborated during the educational program. Team work and collaboration Group of individuals working together to achieve a certain goal is a team. Collaboration is an action in which the health vector and other relevant sectors work together for achievement of a goal. Other members of the society where the target group who are the elder population should corporate with elders to help them achieve their goal of heart attack handling. The elders who are the heads of almost all societies when affected, then the whole society gets a drawback in its day to day activities. Planning Process of making decisions that affects the future outcome is planning. Effective planning aims at finding answers to at least 5 fundamental questions: 1) Where are we now? –present situation 2) Where do want to go? –desired situation 3) How will we get there? –strategies to move from present to desired situation 4) What are the necessary resources required? 5) How will we know when we arrive there? –evaluation of the process Planning of a health program has some basic steps: 1) Studying the situation – involves collecting about a particular problem in our case heart attack on elderly population. The situation is studied and the factors of heart attack to the elderly population are analyzed. 2) Identifying priority problem – diagnosis entails accessing the health state and identifying the problems. These processes provide adequate information and enable decision on how to solve the problems. For prioritizing, the decisive questions are: What is the most problem affecting ma subject? How many have been affected? Does the community consider it serious? Is the community willing to do something about it? Is it possible to carry out positive changes with the available resources? 3) Setting objectives – having selected priority problem which is heart attack on elderly population and the resources available, the next step is to decide how to solve the problem. Many health problems like heart attack can’t be solved quickly since solving health problems involves changing people’s behavior and sometimes several combine activities are required where each and every activity can have one or more planned objectives. An objective should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. Objective can be short term or long term. When designing objective, it is important to review obstacles or limitation that may hinder their achievements. 4) Identifying activities – to meet the objectives and target, the activities to be carried out should be identified correctly. The list of activities designed to meet objectives and targets is sometimes called strategy. Strategy is a military word and it means planning and using resources in a way that gives the best chance of success. The objectives and identified activities should be put together in a specific plan of action. 5) Implementation – putting plan into practice and may include organizing, supervision and directing. Without effective implementation, the plan remains theoretical. To curb heart attack in elderly population who are at risk, the program needs persons for its effective implementation. Scientific research have shown that people above the age of 45 are at higher risk of heart attack contributed by age among other lifestyle factors. Bioaccumulation of cholesterol and other saturated lipid in their body tissues with time as the lifestyle shift to sedentary. Burden to the society Heart attack in elderly population has many negative consequences to the whole community. Unhealthy elders cannot perform their require duty effectively as they may end up spending more time battling the disease, like advising the young population accordingly on several areas of life e.g. marriage issues, religion, disciple, security and other social norms. All this when not done properly we end up with a rotten society full of social evils e.g. abortion, drug abuse, robbery, high number of school drop outs, early marriages, obscene language among youths and excess freedom. The whole society may also face economical challenges as more funds are required to cater for the affected elder to manage the heart attack. Other project in the community may stop as some funds set aside for their completion are diverted to the hospitalization of affected elders. There may be loneliness among the family members of affected elder that causes stress that in one way or another affects their day to day activities like children cannot fully concentrate in school when one or both parents are hospitalized. Setting for the program The educational program on heart attack in elderly population can carried among elder persons who are scientifically proved and concluded to be at higher risk of heart attack disease. Group of volunteer target members may be recruited in manageable numbers let us say 10 to 20 at reasonable locations and educate them on the disease, detailed scientific ideas may not be of help to the elders who cannot get the clear, therefore only basic explanation should be used to explain in layman language and solution arrived at from their own proposals that are reasonable. The younger generation should also be taught to help the elders in fighting and if possible eradicate the disease completely. Good lifestyle among younger generation may to a large extent reduce the risk of heart attack in the future hence the need to educate them. Some gifts may be offered in case the budget of the program implementation is enough to attract more people who are the target. This also encourage them to take the program positively and eliminate the attitude of seeing it as time wastage hence success in the program objectives. Program type The program should be community based as in the people will propose what they are comfortable of doing in order to curb the disease depending on the prevailing terms and conditions in the societal environment. Public advertisement can be a better method to alert people of the program like in market place where there is all walks of life. The program should take as little time as possible to reduce boredom and even some entertainment may be included to bring liveliness of the program. The youths should be taught differently from the elders as they understanding differ by fur. Youths may perceive scientific concepts and therefore should have detailed explanation to help the elders manage the disease. Objectives of the program This program aims at reducing the number heart attack victims in the community by educating the on the preventive measure and management of the disease using the most convenient methods proposed by the target members themselves. Models and health behavior There may be no practical examples to give the people of certain community as the educators may be interacting with them for the first time. Some charts may be used to elaborate elementary knowledge about the disease, booklets e. t. c. but more oral work will be appropriate. This is because some elder people may be unable to read or see properly. Implementation of program results and evaluation In evaluating and knowing the results and general outcome of the program, some statistical work need to be done where the number of patients with heart attack before and after stated period of time during the program is recorded. This will tell how effective was the program and close monitoring is needed in the course of the program for effectiveness of the results. Program improve health The audience and the subject participants of the program will get education that will slowly change their lives positively on heart attack risks after the program. The knowledge acquired is of profit to the people in maintaining a healthier society that is a corner stone in all areas of development. The basic concepts of curbing heart attack learned will also reduce cases of coronary related disorders and reduce drug abuse like smoking which is prohibited in curbing heart attack methods. References www.chemguide.com www.foodconsumer.com www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.webmd.com/heart-disease/heart www.heart.org/heart-attack Healthy habits-a handbook by John Kerry Conceptual approach of chronic diseases by G. H. William 2nd edition, 2001, oxford university press Tropical diseases and other infectious diseases by S. K. Martin, 3th edition, 1997, long man publisher Read More