Aim. The aim of this study was to investigate percpectives of patients with cardiovascular disease about barriers and benefits of health promotion behaviors.

Background. Based on Pender’s health promotion model, certain emotional behaviors such as perceived benefits and barriers have effect on changing health behaviors.

Method. In a descriptive cross sectional study, 260 patients with cardiovascular disease were selected from exercise tolerant test ward of Shahriar social security hospital in 2009. In this study, sampling method was simple. Data were collected through interview.  The instruments included demographic form, Benefits Assessment Scale and Barriers Assessment Scale. The data were analyzed by using SPSS software and descriptive statistics, T-test, ANOVA and Pearson coefficient correlation.

Findings. The findings showed that mean score of perception of health promotion behaviors benefits was 41.14±3.82, and 83.7% of patients had high scores of perception about benefits of health promotion behaviors. There was statistically significant correlation of perception of benefits with education level (P=0.024) and job (P= 0.021). Mean score of perception of health promotion behaviors barriers was 26.81±6.31 and 66.3% of patients had moderate scores of perception about barriers of health promotion behaviors. Perception of barriers was significantly associated with gender (P=0.034) and marital status (P= 0.047).There was negative significant correlation between perception of benefits and perception of barriers (p=0.001).

Conclusion. Regarding the results of this study, seems that increasing perception of patients with cardiovascular disease about benefits of health promotion behaviors is associated with decreased barriers of health promotion behaviors. Educational interventions by professional nurses for patients with cardiovascular disease may help the patients to adherence to health promotion behaviors.

Aim. The purpose of this study was to review the effectiveness of new cardiac biomarkers.

Background. Cardiovascular diseases have been a heavy burden on the health system’s shoulders and caused about 30 percent of human's deaths annually. Irreversible myocardial injury occurs within around 15-20 minutes following the coronary artery occlusion. Therefore, early diagnosis of this problem is very important for the health care professionals to save patients’ lives. Nowadays, thanks to recognition of new biomarkers and using their characteristics, evaluating the short-term and long-term prognosis is possible.

Method. In this study, papers published within the time period 1980 to 2014, were considered. The papers  were searched out by the keywords “cardiac biomarker”, “new cardiac markers”, “coronary diseases”, and “cardiovascular diseases” in Elsevier, Google Scholar, JAMA, Science Direct, Wiley, PubMed, and Iran Medex databases.

Findings. The results indicate that characteristic of each biomarker can play an important role to advance the goals of medicine and harm reduction in the cardiovascular patients. However, despite the high efficiency, routine usage of them is still unclear which indicates the need for further research in this field.

Conclusion. New biomarkers provide new insight about recognition of the causes of cardiovascular diseases, also their easy and rapid application with high sensitivity and predictive value will develop a dramatic change in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with cardiovascular diseases.