Nearly half — 40 percent — of patients who rely on pacemakers and defibrillators had little to no ability to understand information about their cardiac health, according to a study from the Columbia University School of Nursing.
This poses complication risks to patients if they don't understand how the devices work and what to do if they experience an irregular heartbeat, according to the study's authors. The study was published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.
Researchers evaluated the health literacy of 116 patients using the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults. Of the 116 ethnically diverse patients, 77.4 percent reported finishing high school, and the average age of the population was 68.
Almost 30 percent of study participants were found to have inadequate health literacy, and an additional 10 percent had marginal health literacy, the researchers found. Additionally, patients with hypertension or high cholesterol as well as a pacemaker or defibrillator were more than twice as likely to have limited health literacy as patients without those conditions.
"It's not enough to just explain the same thing again in the same way," said lead study author Kathleen Hickey, EdD. "You have to stop to ask more specific questions like what activities they do in a typical day and offer simple instructions so they understand, of example, the appropriate heart rate zone for exercise."