Surfing the web can beat heart attacks
Online treatment for patients with angina and heart disease could prevent them from suffering further illness or even death, scientists claim.
Researchers found that if patients with vascular disease used an online treatment tool in addition to their normal care, they were less likely to get coronary heart disease.
The study, published on bmj.com, made the discovery after a group of patients used a personalised website, exchanged online conversations with a nurse and monitored their disease control on the internet.
Researchers from the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands, measured the 330 participants of the study using the Framingham Heart Score, which predicts the 10-year risk for coronary heart disease.
They found that after one year, the scores in those participating in the online project had fallen by 12pc compared to the patients in the control group.