The Effect of Self-efficacy on Cardiovascular Lifestyle

Background: It is important that patients with vascular diseases adopt a healthy lifestyle so as to reduce vascular risk. Since self-efficacy is an important precondition for health behavior change in patients with chronic disease, we investigated whether self-efficacy was associated with cardiovascular lifestyle in patients with clinical manifestations of vascular diseases.

Methods And Design: In this observational cohort study, 125 patients who had recently been referred for cerebrovascular disease, coronary heart disease, or peripheral arterial disease participated in a 1-year self-management intervention. They completed a self-efficacy questionnaire and questions about their cardiovascular lifestyle at baseline and after 1 year. Logistic regression analyses were performed to quantify the impact of change in self-efficacy on physical activity, smoking behavior, alcohol consumption, and food choices.

Results: Improved self-efficacy was associated with improved adherence to guidelines for physical activity (OR 3.5, 95%CI 1.0-11.0) and food choices (B 0.15, 95%CI 0.00-0.31). No such improvement was seen regarding adherence to guidelines for smoking or alcohol intake.

Conclusion: In patients with vascular diseases, improvements in self-efficacy are associated with an improvement in cardiovascular lifestyle, namely, more exercise and better food choices.