IJERPH, Vol. 19, Pages 1176: Patient Education in Spa Resorts: Experience from a French National Program for Patients with Chronic Venous Insufficiency (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)

The prognosis of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is greatly depending upon the ability of the patients to optimize their health-related behaviors (mainly compliance to compression stockings, physical activity and diet). As this is usually challenging for the patients, we developed a therapeutic education program (TEP) aiming at helping them to achieve these optimizations. We report here the preliminary results obtained with this program. This structured TEP was developed by a working group of 15 health professionals to be used during the regular French spa 3-week treatment course for CVI patients. The program included three interactive workshops aiming at improving the patients’ knowledge, skills and motivation, two educational consultations allowing to set and follow-up their personal action plans and a built-in evaluation. It was implemented in spa resorts specialized in CVI. Among the first 150 patients (116 women and 34 men, mean age 69 years old (SD 8 years), 49% had post-thrombotic disease. Compliance to the education workshops was 98%. After a 3-month follow-up, 83% of the patients fully achieved at least one behavioral objective. Quality of life, as assessed by the CIVIQ 2 auto-questionnaire, improved at 3 months (p = 0.0024) and 9 months (p = 0.018). These results demonstrate the feasibility of a TEP for CVI patients and its ability to improve their health-related behaviors, opening the way for the development of similar programs for other chronic diseases in the setting of spa resorts.