Did you know?
Cardiovascular disease includes numerous conditions affecting the heart and the blood vessels. It includes:
Cardiac disease or coronary heart disease such as:
- Myocardial infarction, medical term for Heart Attack: that is “heart tissue damage or death”. Heart attacks most commonly occur when one or more of the coronary arteries (a network of blood vessels that supply blood to the heart) become blocked.
- Angina: pain resulting from not enough blood flowing to the heart.
- Heart failure: also known as congestive heart failure, occurs when your heart muscle doesn’t pump blood as well as it should.
Cerebrovascular (brain) disease such as:
- Stroke: is when there is a rupture or obstruction of a blood vessel supplying the brain, preventing brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients is accompanied by permanent damage of brain tissue.
- Cerebral hemorrhage: blood bleeding into the brain.
- Paralysis.
Peripheral vascular disease such as:
- Arteriosclerosis (when a plaque builds up inside your arteries).
- Intermittent claudication (cramping pain in your legs).
- Necrosis (death of tissue).
- Amputation.
Effects of Cardiovascular Disease
Kidney transplantation improves patient survival compared to dialysis and it also decreases the risks of heart disease. However, cardiovascular disease is still the leading cause of death after kidney transplantation even when the organ is functioning well.
Cardiovascular disease is responsible for one third of admissions to hospital after kidney transplantation in the United States and can cause damage to the transplanted kidney.
The major risk factors for cardiovascular disease are high blood pressure, diabetes (high blood sugar), high cholesterol, obesity, smoking and an inactive lifestyle.
Research shows that cardiovascular disease and related risk factors are frequent after kidney transplantation.
- High blood pressure, which is defined as a blood pressure over 140/90, affects 40-90% of all kidney transplant recipients.
- Diabetes after transplantation affects between 24-42% of all kidney transplant recipients. Diabetes is defined as a fasting blood sugar over 7 mmol/L or a random glucose level (sugar level) higher than 11.1 mmol/L.
- High blood cholesterol, or dyslipidemia, affects 50% of all kidney transplant recipients.
In addition to the above-mentioned risk factors for cardiovascular disease, research has also shown other risk factors such as inflammation, chronic rejection, anemia (low red blood cell count) and loss of proteins in your urine.
How am I doing?
Numerous symptoms are associated with cardiovascular disease.
There are various signs that you are having a heart attack. If you have any of these signs, you should either call 911, go to your emergency department or consult your physician urgently:
- Chest discomfort such as pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain, burning, heaviness.
- Pain or discomfort in the arms, left shoulder, elbows, jaw, or back.
- Sweating.
- Upper body discomfort.
- Nausea.
- Shortness of breath.
- Light-headedness.
Stroke is an emergency. If you have any of the signs of a stroke, call 911.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation has developed a simple FAST tool to remind everyone to act urgently because it could affect your survival:
- F: Face is dropping?
- A: can you raise both Arms?
- S: is Speech slurred or jumbled?
- T: Time to call 911.
For more details, visit https://www.heartandstroke.ca/
What can I do?
In order to decrease the risk for having cardiovascular disease, you can do many things:
- Stop smoking if you are a smoker.
- Take your medication for high blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol as prescribed.
- Monitor your blood sugar and your blood pressure, talk to your healthcare provider when they are not within the normal range.
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Adopt healthy eating habits (for more details, visit the Canada’s Food Guide recommendations: https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/):
- 7-10 fruit and vegetable servings per day;
- Eat whole grain foods;
- Eat at least 2 servings of fish per week and include beans, lentils and tofu as part of your diet.
- When you eat meat, choose lean meat and keep your portion under 4 oz.
- Be active: 150 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activities per week.
- Maintain a healthy weight.
How can I do it?
You can discuss with your healthcare provider the way to achieve your goals in order to prevent cardiovascular disease. For example, your healthcare provider could help you to achieve the recommended levels of blood pressure and blood sugar with medication. Also, he/she can prescribe medication to help you to quit smoking or refer you to a support group.
In order to adopt healthy eating habits, you can consult a nutritionist who will help you make changes in your diet that suit you.
To encourage yourself to be more active, you can keep track of your physical activity with a smart watch or a pedometer. You can also consult a physiotherapist or a kinesiologist who will help you to reach your activity goals.
More Information
This section was written by Dr Marie-Chantal Fortin (MD, PhD, FRCPC, scientist at the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montreal-CHUM), and Fabián Andrés Ballesteros Gallego (Research Assistant, CRCHUM).And reviewed by Nicolas Fernandez (patient partner); James Myers (kidney transplant recipient); Rosalie Langevin (patient partner); AND by our research team.