The Daily Activity Analysis of Patient with Cardiovascular Diseases at Home

Preventing from recurrence of acute cardiac problems as well as improving the heart functions for the patients with cardiovascular diseases is a very important issue in homecare. According to previous reports, negative emotions symptom such as depression and anxiety is one of the common risk factors which are difficult to monitor and hardly to manage. In this study, the personal factors that may introduce the negative emotions symptom at home are investigated for the smart home applications. Ninety two out-patients with the 4-6 days after acute myocardial infarction or pulmonary arterial hypertension were recruited for this study with the informed consent. The exercise capacities of these subjects were evaluated using the cardiopulmonary exercise test, and their associated daily activities at home were obtained by interview method with the Daily Activity and Living Field Questionnaire (DALFQ). The results showed that the patients with cardiovascular diseases usually had high ration with the negative emotions symptom, and low exercise capacity in comparison the aged-gender matched normal subjects. From the analysis of DALFQ, long-time staying at the living room and watching the television were the most happened location and leisure while they are awake at home. One important personal factor that may induce the negative emotions symptom was lack of interactive team leisure. Therefore, we strongly suggested that television can be considered as a good service platform for interactive games or team leisure items. In addition, the telemedicine or tele-rehabilitation needs to be integrated for group exercise therapy in their living room so as not only to alleviate the anxiety or depression tendency but also to improve the cardiopulmonary function.