Ischemic Heart Disease, Obesity
Conditions
Keywords
expressive writing, cardiac rehabilitation
Brief summary
This study will determine whether the psychological and physical benefits of expressive writing extend to obese in-patients with Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD)referred to cardiac rehabilitation
Detailed description
Expressive writing, for as little as 3-5 sessions of 20 minutes, has been found to improve both physical and psychological health based on health outcome measures such as number of doctor's visits and hospital days, blood pressure control, lung and immune function, pain, anxiety and depression. Given its simplicity and obvious advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness, expressive writing has great potential as a therapeutic tool or as a means of self-help, either alone or as an adjunct to traditional therapies. This modality has not been studied in obese patients with Ischemic Heart Disease.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALActive Comparator: Traditional expressive writing
Participants in the traditional expressive writing condition write about their feelings about one or more stressful experiences they lived in the past, for at least 20 minutes each time, during a two week period
BEHAVIORALDisease-related Expressive writing
Participants in the disease-related expressive writing condition write about their feelings about cardiac disease four times, for at least 20 minutes each time, during a two week period.
BEHAVIORALSham Comparator: Neutral writing
Participants in the neutral writing condition write about the facts about cardiac disease, for at least 20 minutes each time, during a two week period
Sponsors
Istituto Auxologico Italiano
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE (Subject)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
No minimum to 70 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* obesity * Ischemic Heart disease * Signed informed consent
Exclusion criteria
* Visual or manual limitations that preclude reading and writing * Unwilling to participate
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SF12 | 1 year | The SF12 is a generic measure of both physical and emotional components of health-related quality of life |
| BDI-II | 1 year | The Beck Depression Inventory is a measure of depressive symptoms |
| BDI | 1 year | The Beck Anxiety Inventory is a measure of cognitive and somatic symptoms of anxiety |
| Brief-PTGI | 1 year | The Brief Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory is a measure of positive growth following adversity |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Coronary Risk Factors | 1 year | Hypertension, HDL, LDL, |
| METs | 1 year | Metabolic equivalents are a measure of exercise capacity. 1 MET represents the amount of oxygen consumed at rest and is equal to approximately 3.5 ml O2 kg-1 min-1 |
| BMI | 1 year | Body Mass Index (BMI) is a measure of obesity and is calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared |
Countries
Italy
Outcome results
None listed