Report highlights gap in CV patient education

An international report authored by an alliance of leading heart disease, stroke and diabetes organizations across the world, warns that gaps in patient education on cardiovascular disease are holding back efforts to reduce deaths from heart attacks and strokes. The Look Closer Coalition, an initiative funded by leading French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis and US major Bristol-Myers Squibb, highlights gaps in patient knowledge and physician tools to educate patients at high risk of CV disease about the underlying process that could lead to their death.

According to the report, failure by patients to understand the complex and holistic nature of their condition is hindering the management of heart attacks and strokes by physicians, which in turn leads to less patients complying with the preventive measures they recommend.

An international survey of over 800 physicians, called the Cardiovascular Health Outcomes: Issues in Communication and Education survey, commissioned specially for the report, revealed that doctors rarely discuss the underlying disease that causes a heart attack or stroke, with one in four almost never raising the subject in patient consultations. Instead, they focus on individual risk factors, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. In particular, they rarely discuss the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes: arterial blood clots.