High altitude activities and patients with cardiovascular risk
Houston, TX – A new review aiming to help physicians advise patients who are considering high-altitude activities such as trekking and skiing has been published in the January 2010 issue of the American Heart Journal [1].
Dr John P Higgins
Lead author Dr John P Higgins (University of Texas Medical School, Houston), a sports cardiologist, told heartwire: “We have issued two sets of recommendations. The first is for doctors seeing anyone who is relatively healthy and mentions that they are thinking of doing a trek to Kilimanjaro, for example. The second set is specifically for cardiac patients.”
Higgins says much of the advice is “common sense” and many cardiac patients anticipating such activities are pretty sensible and know what they are capable of. “If the disease is not too bad, in most cases the travel is possible with some very minor adjustment in medications and education about what to look out for,” he notes.
But there are those “who are having a mid-life crisis, have just turned 60 and might have had a heart attack in their 50s, and say, ‘Before I die, I want to do this expedition,’ ” he observes. Some of these latter patients “have no idea, and they can really run into trouble.”
Click on this link to read the whole article at www.theheart.org.