• Cardiac Rehabilitation

Primary prevention

  • Usually performed in primary care settings.
  • The focus is on reduction of cardiac risk factors, education and community-based exercise.
  • Have an invaluable effect on the rate of cardiac disease with a decrease in lipid profiles, obesity, and blood pressure.
  • Ideally, primary programs should begin in childhood.
  • Components (include management of hypertension and lipids, along with encouraging exercise and consideration of antiplatelet agents) are all cost-effective

Secondary prevention

  • Mainly performed in rehabilitation settings.
  • Includes all of the features of primary prevention + Disease-specific education + Formal exercise

Smoking cessation is a crucial part of both primary and secondary prevention programs.

Who needs CR?

1- Patients after myocardial infarction (MI)

  • Phase 1 rehabilitation (Acute phase in hospital)

    • Begins immediately following a cardiac event
    • Ends at discharge.

    Phase 2 rehabilitation (Training phase)

    • Outpatient phase
    • Includes secondary prevention, intense education, and aerobic conditioning.

    Phase 3 rehabilitation (maintenance phase)

    • The most difficult phase
    • Includes maintenance of lifestyle modifications and continued aerobic exercise.

    Risk factor modification is performed at all phases.

2- Angina pectoris

  • Exercise improves peripheral efficiency and coronary artery collateralization.

3- After coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery

  • Importantly, arm exercises should be limited until sternal healing occurs (6 weeks after surgery)

4- Heart failure

5- Valvular heart disease

6- Cardiac Arrhythmias

7- After heart transplantation