Cardiac rehabilitation and rehabilitation medicine | Sirinda Kittiprachakul, MD

Dr. Ning | Sirinda Kittiprachakul, MD

Rehabilitation medicine specialist

Cardiac rehabilitation and rehabilitation medicine

Sirinda Kittiprachakul, MD, a rehabilitation physician, describes why cardiac rehabilitation matters: it is the discipline that aims to get patients with heart conditions back to ordinary daily life, including the activities they love, without feeling that the illness is a limit on them

What drew Dr. Sirinda to medicine was work that helps other people — seeing a patient who had been critically ill get better and go back to the life they had, and above all, as a rehabilitation physician, helping patients with chronic disease improve their quality of life

"Even when the improvement is not large, the patient feels their life can be better, where before they may have lost hope"

- Dr. Ning

That feeling is what confirms that choosing rehabilitation medicine was the right decision

Cardiac rehabilitation

is the rehabilitation of patients with heart conditions, particularly those with ischaemic heart disease, those who have had heart surgery, or those with a leaking heart valve who need an operation. Once the surgeon's part is finished, it becomes the rehabilitation team's role to help the patient return to the life they had

Preventing a recurrence through exercise

Dr. Sirinda points out that patients with heart conditions can take on demanding activity — running a marathon really is possible — but it has to be under the care of a doctor and a physiotherapist, who design a suitable programme and check the body's readiness rigorously

The role of technology in treatment

Dr. Ning explains that technology matters a great deal today, whether in diagnosis — a wearable device that tracks the heartbeat can reveal an abnormality even before the patient has symptoms, so they can see a doctor sooner — or in rehabilitation itself, in treatment and monitoring, monitoring the patient remotely in real time around the clock, and if the heartbeat becomes abnormal during exercise the system can alert the doctor immediately

The effect on society
Thailand and the world are moving into an ageing society, and the older a patient is the more likely they are to depend on others. So when a rehabilitation physician can help an older person do more for themselves, that lifts a burden not only from the family but from the country as a whole

Looking after your health is everyone's job

From her experience with many patients with chronic disease and heart conditions, Dr. Ning stresses that most of these conditions can be prevented by looking after your own health

"It is not the doctor's job alone to look after your health — you have to be the one who looks after it too"

- Dr. Ning

Health care, exercise and diet therefore matter, so that everyone can live without depending on others right through to the last part of life