The Effectiveness and Current Challenges of Home-Based Cardiac Telerehabilitation for Patients with Coronary Artery Disease: A Narrative Review.

The high mortality rate associated with coronary artery disease (CAD) represents a significant global health challenge. While home-based cardiac telerehabilitation (HBCTR) has emerged as a key area of research, its clinical effectiveness remains controversial. This review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of HBCTR interventions in patients with CAD across multiple domains, including cardiovascular outcomes, cardiopulmonary function, treatment adherence, and quality of life. It also seeks to identify the key challenges impeding its widespread implementation. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and CNKI for relevant studies published between January 2015 and October 2025 using a combination of keywords and MeSH terms. The findings indicate that HBCTR effectively improves cardiovascular outcomes, cardiopulmonary function, adherence, and quality of life in CAD patients. Specifically, HBCTR programs incorporating app-based follow-up and wearable device monitoring were associated with reduced all-cause mortality and readmission rates, as well as enhanced exercise tolerance. Similarly, HBCTR protocols combined with traditional exercise regimens improved cardiovascular outcomes. At the psychological and metabolic levels, HBCTR alleviated anxiety and depression, optimized metabolic indicators, and demonstrated superior adherence compared with traditional center-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR). In conclusion, HBCTR offers comparable or even better rehabilitation outcomes to center-based CR. However, challenges related to technology adaptation, data security, and policy support remain key barriers to its broader adoption. Future research should prioritize large-scale, multi-center randomized controlled trials to verify the feasibility and long-term benefits of widespread HBCTR implementation, and to better understand how differences in technology, patient demographics, and regional resources affect intervention effects.