Pedro Morouço, researcher of ciTechCare, together with other physical exercise professionals, published a systematic review about the impact telemonitoring has on hypertension control.
Hypertension is a growing problem in daily society, and specialists expected that all over the Europe, around 35 to 40% of population is hypertensive and, in Portugal, the prevalence of hypertensive adults is around 42,6%.
The systematic review resulted in the analysis of 19 eligible articles and the conclusion was that physical exercise really contributes to the control of hypertension and on people with co-morbidities, like heart failure, improve their functional resistance.
According to Pedro Morouço, “the multidisciplinary approach on this article contributed to the selection of this article to be the journal cover, I guess”.
The article was, actually, cover on April Edition of the European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education and contributed to increase knowledge on this topic which is behind the innovative project that integrates the internal medicine service of the CHL (Hospital Center of Leiria), physical exercise and psychology professionals from School of Education and Social Sciences (ESECS) and ciTechCare researchers whose aim is to develop a telemonitoring plan for diabetic and hypertensive people enrolled in physical exercise prescription appointment at the hospital.
The project will last 2 years and the project team is composed of Roberta Frontini, Ricardo Gonçalves, Rogério Salvador from ESECS, Adélia Miragaia and Cláudia Pinto, internal medicine physicians, from CHL.
The participants, identified with hypertension and/or diabetes, will be separated in three different groups according to the motivation to perform a physical exercise plan: a control group, a home-based group (doing exercise independently, at home) and a center-based group (doing exercise in the presence of professionals).
Firstly, the patient will be submitted to a clinical assessment and advised to start an individual exercise plan. After that, the patient will attend to a behaviour change assessment, with a psychologist and, according to that, the patient is invited to a physical exercise program, and can decide if the patient wants to be part of the project.
The project also aims to evaluate the behaviour changes and the physical condition of those enrolled patients, over the time.
In an interview with Região de Leiria, Maria de Jesus Banza, Director of Internal Medicine Service highlights that “the investigation related to the clinical practice aims to improve the knowledge and to develop new methodologies to upgrade healthcare services”.
The project will be held on HSA facilities and the participants will perform the exercise plan two or three times a week, non-consecutive. Those patients will be supervised by physicians from internal medicine service and exercise physiologists through phone calls every 2 weeks and every 3 months, at the hospital, through a medical appointment.