Abstract
The prognosis of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is greatly depending upon the ability of the patients to optimize their health-related behaviors (mainly compliance to compression stockings, physical activity and diet). As this is usually challenging for the patients, we developed a therapeutic education program (TEP) aiming at helping them to achieve these optimizations. We report here the preliminary results obtained with this program. This structured TEP was developed by a working group of 15 health professionals to be used during the regular French spa 3-week treatment course for CVI patients. The program included three interactive workshops aiming at improving the patients’ knowledge, skills and motivation, two educational consultations allowing to set and follow-up their personal action plans and a built-in evaluation. It was implemented in spa resorts specialized in CVI. Among the first 150 patients (116 women and 34 men, mean age 69 years old (SD 8 years), 49% had post-thrombotic disease. Compliance to the education workshops was 98%. After a 3-month follow-up, 83% of the patients fully achieved at least one behavioral objective. Quality of life, as assessed by the CIVIQ 2 auto-questionnaire, improved at 3 months (p = 0.0024) and 9 months (p = 0.018). These results demonstrate the feasibility of a TEP for CVI patients and its ability to improve their health-related behaviors, opening the way for the development of similar programs for other chronic diseases in the setting of spa resorts.
Highlights
Published: 21 January 2022Chronic Venous Insufficiency (clinical classes C4 to C6 of the CEAP international classification of Chronic Venous Disorders (CVD)) [1] is a disabling condition substantially altering the patients’ quality of life
These results demonstrate the feasibility of a TEP for CVI patients and its ability to improve their health-related behaviors, opening the way for the development of similar programs for other chronic diseases in the setting of spa resorts
The education program was built-up by a national pluri-professional working group of 15 health professionals from the 12 French spa resorts accredited for CVD patients with the help of a group of patients who gave their feed-back regarding the proposed educational objectives and tools. It was applied by a local team of health professionals, who had benefited from a three-day training in patient education dedicated to this program
Summary
Published: 21 January 2022Chronic Venous Insufficiency (clinical classes C4 to C6 of the CEAP international classification of Chronic Venous Disorders (CVD)) [1] is a disabling condition substantially altering the patients’ quality of life. The correction of the abnormal venous hemodynamics is important and feasible in patients with CVI and incompetence of the superficial venous system and varicose veins, this may be insufficient in patients with already altered skin microcirculation, and for those with a predominance of deep vein system incompetence. In patients with those conditions, rehabilitation and the improvement of the patients’ health-related behavior are valuable therapeutic targets as stated in international guidelines [6,7,8]
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