Patients who are motivated to perform self-care and consider the results of care to be important were more likely to adhere to a healthy lifestyle. Responsible patients were more likely to adhere to their medication. It is important to account for these elements as a part of secondary prevention strategies among patients with coronary heart disease after a percutaneous coronary intervention.

Health care organisations and professionals with responsibilities for patient safety should seek to standardise the preparation of nursing students incorporating requisite international standards and benchmarks.

Because a healthy lifestyle predicted factors known to explain adherence, these issues should be emphasised particularly for female patients not in a close personal relationship, with low education and a shorter coronary heart disease duration with previous coronary intervention.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Transient activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis with a sex steroid surge is observed in boys and girls during the first months of life. However, the role of sex steroids in the regulation of growth has not been substantiated in infancy. We tested the hypothesis that testosterone (T) surge, known to be higher in infant boys than in girls during the transient postnatal gonadal activation regulates linear growth in infants.

This study provides evidence that healthcare professionals should be more aware of the individual needs for social support among patients with coronary heart disease after percutaneous coronary intervention.