Hospital team offer pionering Super Rehab
A research team at the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust is looking at how an innovative lifestyle intervention, called Super Rehab, could become an effective new treatment option, helping to save lives and reduce hospital procedures, while also cutting costs to the NHS.
Super Rehab is all about testing the impact of a high-level, wellresourced one-to-one support programme for patients with heart disease. It offers more than just advice, providing a tailored diet and exercise programme personalised to the individual with support to make sure the changes are practical and can become part of a daily routine.
Working in partnership with the University of Bath, and with support from RUHX, the hospital’s charity, RUH cardiovascular experts have already seen that this approach can be life-changing.
Super Rehab is being offered to patients earlier in the evolution of their forms of heart disease than other rehab programmes, aiming to halt its progression, help patients feel better, and potentially even reverse the disease process and turn the clock back.
Patients are offered Super Rehab in addition to standard treatments, and the research team are collaborating with researchers at the University of Oxford to track the impact.
Dr Ali Khavandi, consultant cardiologist, said: “There has been an evolution in technology over the last 10 years that allows us to treat more and more complex illness and make a difference to our patients.
“Now, we have the exciting opportunity to focus back a few steps and look at what we can do to prevent patients from getting to this stage in the first place, by looking at how dietary and lifestyle
changes, such as getting more exercise, can improve, or even reverse, chronic illness.”
As well as Dr Khavandi, the research team includes Dr Jonathan Rodrigues, consultant cardiothoracic radiologist and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Bath, Prof Dylan Thompson, Professor of human physiology at the University of Bath, Prof Fiona Gillison, Professor of behavioural psychology at the University of Bath, and Dr John Graby and Dr David Murphy, cardiology clinical research fellows.
Rhyannon Boyd, head of RUHX, said: “We are elated to be supporting this unique and leading research project at the RUH, knowing that our £300,000 funding has enabled the team to establish their relationship with other academic institutions including the universities of Bath, Bristol and Oxford, so that they can work together on their first study which focuses on coronary heart disease.”
You can find out more information about the Super Rehab project on the RUH website: ruh.nhs.uk.