Ischaemic Heart Disease Treatment

When you're diagnosed with ischemic heart disease, a narrowing has occurred within the arterial walls to the heart. More commonly known as coronary artery disease or even coronary heart disease, fatty deposits begin to accumulate within the coronary blood vessels, which can eventually cause restricted blood flow. If your heart doesn't receive an adequate amount of blood, it's deprived of oxygen and other nutrients, resulting in a shortness of breath, chest pain and fatigue. Though this condition usually develops over a prolonged period of time, treatment is available to help remedy ischemic heart disease.

Prevention

• One of the most effective methods of treating ischemic heart disease is to prevent the condition from ever developing. This can be done in a number of different ways, starting with your diet. A "heart healthy" diet consists of a wide array of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and low-fat dairy. You should also restrict your intake of animal fats, saturated fats, trans fats, sodium and cholesterol. These substances can often set the stage for high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol, which are both conditions that contribute to coronary artery disease.

  Exercise is also an important facet in preventing ischemic heart disease, so try to incorporate exercise into your daily routine, such as walking, biking, swimming and running. By coupling diet with exercise, you can usually maintain a healthy weight, which can often help prevent heart disease. And if you're currently dealing with either high blood pressure or high blood cholesterol (as well as diabetes), make sure to manage your condition, as your arteries are already more vulnerable to the accumulation of plaque.

Lifestyle

• Once you've developed ischemic heart disease, treatment typically starts off with the most conservative approach to care. For most people, this includes a change in lifestyle. Lifestyle changes follow along the same line as prevention, incorporating diet, exercise, weight loss and stress reduction (another contributing factor of the disease). If these modifications fail to provide results, other methods are then frequently brought into play. However, these treatment methods are dictated by the cause of the disease.

Cholesterol

• Ischemic heart disease linked to high blood cholesterol can be treated with medications. Statins are probably the most common cholesterol-reducing drug, but you may instead be prescribed a fibrate, niacin or bile acid sequestrant to treat the condition. These types of medicines are usually coupled with lifestyle changes, like diet and exercise, to better reduce your overall blood cholesterol level.

Blood Pressure

• With ischemic heart disease linked to high blood pressure, the medications more so revolve around standard "heart" drugs. ACE inhibitors are a grouping of drugs often used for this condition, since they chemically reduce your blood pressure and lessen damage to your arteries. However, doctors are also known to prescribe beta blockers and calcium channel blockers to treat this form of heart disease. Since the heart is being deprived of oxygen, beta blocker can actually slow the rhythm of your heart, reducing its need of this gas. Calcium channel blockers help to relax blood vessels, increasing the blood flow to your heart.

Surgical Procedures

• If diet, exercise and prescription drugs are unable to treat the condition (or the narrowing is rather severe), surgery may be necessary to correct the problem. With ischemic heart disease, it usually involves one of two procedures, either bypass surgery or stent placement. In bypass surgery, a graft is fashioned to circumvent the area of narrowing. Stent placement entails the insertion of a coil to manually keep the narrowed portion of the artery open.