In this internet age of instant access to information, sometimes it’s hard to know if you found the right medical information that you need. Most of the time, what we are looking for is information - simple, straight-forward answers to our questions. Often, we get more information than a lay person can quickly process. When it comes to heart health, the American Heart Association (AHA) has taken the lead in putting together multiple tools to help you assess your heart health. One of the AHA tools it The Heart Profiler.
The Heart Profiler is an online questionnaire which provides the user with unique customized results based on the responses received. Five major conditions linked to heart disease are available for exploration on The Heart Profiler: atrial fibrillation, cholesterol, coronary artery disease, heart failure and high blood pressure. The user may explore all conditions or pick and choose which conditions are of interest. All information on The Heart Profiler has been developed and reviewed by AHA cardiologists and leaders in the health community. The information is up to date so that you can make better, more fully informed heart health decisions.
The Heart Profiler website indicates that questionnaire takes approximately 20 minutes to complete. I chose to explore the Cholesterol section of The Heart Profiler and it took me 15 minutes. The questionnaire itself consisted of several sections including:
ABOUT CHOLESTEROL: This section covered general information about cholesterol (i.e. What is cholesterol? What are the dangers and risks? How is it measured? What’s normal?). This section also covered general questions about your individual cholesterol levels.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION: This section gathers information about the user such as age, gender, ethnicity and pre- or post menopausal status.
MEDICAL HISTORY: This section gathers general information about your health factors that might impact heart health such as whether or not you have diabetes, kidney, liver or thyroid problems, high fasting blood sugars and what medications, if any, you take for these conditions. Your weight is also tracked in this section and your Body Mass Index (BMI) is calculated. The questions are very easy and the answers are simply, Yes, No or I Don’t Know.
CARDIO VASCULAR HISTORY: In this section, The Heart Profiler simply asks straight-forward questions about your heart health and whether or not you’ve ever experienced heart related events (i.e. angina, coronary artery disease, stroke, high blood pressure, vascular disease, heart failure).
LIFESTYLE HABITS: This section focuses on gather information about your current lifestyle that might impact your overall heart health such as whether or not you smoke, drink, how often your exercise and if you modify your diet due to cholesterol.
FAMILY HISTORY: This section is fairly straightforward and asks the question if you’ve ever had a family member with a history of heart related disease. Questions don’t get much simpler than found in this section.
So, after investing my 15 – 20 minutes of time, what did I get for my efforts? At the end of the questionnaire, The Heart Profiler providers the user with several customized reports based on their individual responses.
• Profile Summary and Assessment: The Heart Profiler assigns you a risk level of low, moderate or moderately high based on your responses. Your risk level is calculated based on the scale used in the Framingham Heart Study. The treatment options which are presented in the Treatment Option Report will be based upon the guidelines for your risk group. The Heart Profiler also provides you information on the national averages for your age/demographic group so that you can compare. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my 10-year risk of having a cardiac event was only one percent. However, I was considered in the moderate group because of other risk factors which were present. So, I’m doing some things right and need to improve on others to move myself to the low risk group.
• Risk Factor Report. This was quite an interesting report. First, information is provided about what risk factors may influence your heart health in general. The remainder of the information was divided into in four categories enabling you to easily locate the information of most interest to you. The categories were: 1) Risk Factors You Can’t Changes, 2) Risk Factors You Have That Need To Be Changed, 3) Risk Factors To Be Aware Of That You Don’t Have and 4) Potential Risk Factors of Note.
• Treatment Options Report. The last report provided by The Heart Profiler is a treatment option report. This report addresses possible treatment options for each of the risk factors that you may have.
After writing for EmpowHER on heart health for all these months, I think I’m pretty informed on the topic so I was skeptical as to whether or not I’d personally learn anything new from The Heart Profiler that I did not already know. I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Heart Profiler provided me with a suggestion regarding a possible cause of one of my conditions that I had not considered before. The tool also provided suggestions and guidance for topics to discuss with my doctor.
Nothing can replace medical advice and the relationship you have with your doctor and The Heart Profiler should not be viewed as a replacement to professional medical care. However, it is an excellent resource that provides guidance regarding health conditions that impact your heart, how those conditions may impact your health, suggestions for discussion points with your doctor, suggestions (in my case) of causation avenues to explore, along with comprehensive information on treatment options. The results may surprise you and at a minimum, you’ll go into your doctor’s appointment a more fully informed patient who is better able to participate in fully informed health care decisions.
Until next time, here’s wishing you a healthy heart.
Source:
The Heart Profilers, 14 Apr 2009, American Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3000416