It is well-known that participation in exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) increases exercise capacity and improves cardiovascular mortality in patients following myocardial infarction (MI). Nevertheless, there are conflicting data regarding CR effects on total mortality. In June 2021, the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology published new results from the SWEDEHEART registry, which shed more light on this topic.
In total, 20 895 patients from the SWEDEHEART registry were included. Mortality data were obtained from the Swedish National Population Registry. During a mean of 4.55 (±2.33) years of follow-up, 1000 patients died. Taking a wide range of potential confounders into consideration, participation in CR was related to significantly lower total mortality [hazard ratio (HR) 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.62–0.83]. Excluding patients with shorter follow-up than 2 years did not alter the results. Exercise-based CR participation was also related to lowered total mortality in most of the investigated subgroups. Moreover, the risk reduction was more pronounced in women than in men (HR 0.54 vs. 0.81, respectively).
These results further support the recommendations to participate in CR, and comprehensive CR programmes should be offered to all patients post-MI.
Reference: https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurjpc/zwab083/6294517
