Coronary Artery Disease or CAD is a prevalent disease not only in the United States but worldwide, affecting and even claiming lives of millions of people every year . The CAD presentation did acknowledge this fact. However, it forgot to mention that the already high rates of CAD-related morbidity and mortality are still continuing to increase every year. That means more and more people are becoming diagnosed with the disease, some of whom even suffer from the condition’s secondary complications such as immobility, etc. This also means higher healthcare costs not only for the affected individuals but also for the government. Evidently, majority of the risk factors for developing coronary art disease are modifiable which means that something can always be done to decrease the likelihood but not completely avoid developing the condition. The only major non-modifiable risk factors are age, gender, and genes (if the condition runs in the family) . It can be safely assumed then that CAD is a lifestyle and diet-based condition.
One of the good points of the presentation is that it not only focused on one aspect of nursing practice but on three: primary, secondary, and tertiary intervention. However, as always, the primary intervention—or the prevention part should get the biggest share of attention since it would always be more practical to prevent the development of a condition than to cure it. The incorporation of evidence-based practice on developing possible generic CAD patient approach was also a good idea since it basically makes use of the clinical experiences of other nurses who have encountered the same situation (handling CAD patients) that one may encounter now or in the future. Using EBPT is somehow similar to getting ahead of the game or learning from other people’s clinical experience, something which can prove to be more time and resource-efficient (both for the allied medical practitioner and for the patient), especially when it comes to treating sophisticated medication conditions such as Coronary Artery Disease.
References
Awtry, E., & Loscalzo, J. (Cecil Essentials of Medicine). Coronary Heart Disease. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders.
Erkkila, A., & Booth, S. (2008). Vitamin K Intake and Atherosclerosis. Curr. Opin. Lipidol, 39-42.
