What the ITACARE-P Light-Heart and Sweet-Heart projects have taught us

Abstract

Sweet Heart and Light Heart represent the first two educational formats of ITACARE-P, a recently established scientific association that joins various professionals with the aim of promoting all activities related to Cardiac Prevention and Rehabilitation. These educational formats represent opportunities for updating, comparing and sharing ideas among experts in order to standardize behaviors on hot topics. Pathologies in the metabolic field were chosen: diabetes mellitus and obesity, especially due to the cardiologist's possibility of prescribing drugs belonging to the SGLT2-i and GLP-RA classes, which have been shown to have a cardioprotective and nephroprotective effect, thus carrying a favorable influence on cardiovascular mortality. Sweet Heart and Light Heart were structured in a series of lectures alternated with “peer-to-peer” discussions; the possibilities offered by Italian National Health Service refundability in the prescription of these drugs and the difficulties that can be encountered in communicating this therapy to patients, particularly in the case of obesity where the purchase of the drug is at the patient's own expense, were examined. The results of this initiative was the drafting and publication of a position paper involving the entire Scientific Committee of the Association concerning the management of the patient suffering from diabetes mellitus in Cardiac Rehabilitation, with the peculiarities that concern the approach to the patient in this setting, such as the prescription of physical exercise in the same way as a drug, the introduction of process and outcome indicators, and the search for an anti-atherogenic or rather hemodynamic effect.