A potential source for development of medical tourism of India: “role of traditional holistic medicine in cardiovascular rehabilitation”

Medical tourism as a term of tourism has risen rapidly in recent decades. One of the major reasons for medical tourism is to get low cost and world-class medical treatment in countries like India, Thailand, South America, Singapore, and Malaysia. Health and medical tourism is perceived as one of the fastest growing segments in marketing ‘Destination India’ today. In recent years, availability of latest medical facilities and technological advancement in developing countries like India making these countries as the hot zones for medical tourism. As a rule of thumb in medical tourism, people are not only aspiring better treatments for their ailments but are also looking at the holistic well-being. They want to recover, relax, rejuvenate, rejoice and more over get away from the routine. Thus, Medical Tourism offers a synergy of healthcare, tourism and hospitality, proving to be an attractive and energetic health package for the people. India offers World Class medical facilities, comparable with any of the western countries. India has state of the art hospitals and the best qualified doctors, despite the lowest cost in all kind of medical interventions compared with other developing countries. Other advantages of Medical Tourism in India include no waiting list, & less chance of resisted infections compared to UK or other western countries. Since Cardiovascular Disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, medical tourism in Cardiovascular Disease treatments has a huge potential to attract health tourist from all over the world. Although medical tourism in surgical interventions in cardiovascular medicine has started recently in India, but Cardiovascular Rehabilitation is a forgotten horizon and is undermined. Cardiac Rehabilitation with its multi-disciplinary team approach including Cardiology, Physical therapy, Psychological and Nutritional management and life style changes can play a significant role in improving healthcare tourism prospects.India has the huge potential of being a hot zone for cardiovascular medicine and Cardiac Rehabilitation because of the availability of all facilities and required technological equipment, up to date team for cardiac rehabilitations, and lower cost. Since psychological management and stress reduction is one the most important parts in cardiac rehabilitation, India with its large number of resorts and spa’s and opportunities for Safaris at a very low cost has a tremendous capability of such intervention. In summary, according to the components of cardiac rehabilitation, India with its particular native holistic treatments like Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Yuga, Meditations and Vegetarian diet has a huge potential to contribute and expand in Cardiac Rehabilitation specifically and become a leading country for such intervention which is underestimated in current practice of medical tourism of India

Effect of Exercise-Based Cardiac Rehabilitation on Ejection Fraction in Coronary Artery Disease Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Exercise training as a part of cardiac rehabilitation aims to restore patient with heart disease to health. However, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is clinically used as a predictor of long-term prognosis in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients, there is a scarcity of data on the effectiveness of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation on LVEF. Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation on LVEF in early post-event CAD patients. Patients and Methods: In a single blinded, randomized controlled trial, post-coronary event CAD patients from the age group of 35-75 years, surgically (Coronary artery bypass graft or percutaneous coronary angioplasty) or conservatively treated, were recruited from Golsar Hospital, Iran. Exclusion criteria were high-risk group (AACVPR-99) patients and contraindications to exercise testing and training. Forty-two patients were randomized either into Study or Control. The study group underwent a 12-week structured individually tailored exercise program either in the form of Center-based (CExs) or Home-based (HExs) according to the ACSM-2005 guidelines. The control group only received the usual cardiac care without any exercise training. LVEF was measured before and after 12 weeks of exercise training for all three groups. Differences between and within groups were analyzed using the general linear model, two-way repeated measures at alfa=0.05. Results: Mean age of the subjects was 60.5 ± 8.9 years. There was a significant increase in LVEF in the study (46.9 ± 5.9 to 61.5 ± 5.3) group compared with the control (47.9 ± 7.0 to 47.6 ± 6.9) group (P=0.001). There was no significant difference in changes in LVEF between the HExs and CExs groups (P=1.0). Conclusion: A 12-week early (within 1 month post-discharge) structured individually tailored exercise training could significantly improve LVEF in post-event CAD patients