The Effects of Interventions on Health-Related Quality of Life of People Living With Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review.

AIM: To synthesise the evidence from randomised controlled trials on the effectiveness of interventions to improve health-related quality of life in people living with cardiovascular disease.

DESIGN

Systematic review and narrative synthesis.

DATA SOURCES: A systematic search of eight databases was conducted to identify relevant papers that were published in English and peer-reviewed.

REVIEW

METHODS

The titles and abstracts of the articles were screened by two independent reviewers. The remaining articles underwent full text screening, followed by quality appraisal conducted by two independent reviewers.

RESULTS

This review included 13 studies. The intervention in all studies was cardiac rehabilitation. In spite of this, the studies used different measures of health-related quality of life (HRQL) which prevented the conduct of a meta-analysis. Four themes were identified in the reported findings.

CONCLUSION

Understanding the specific aspects of cardiac rehabilitation that are related to the improvement of physical and mental HRQL of people living with cardiovascular disease requires further consideration and then incorporation into nursing plans and nursing interventions to enhance health outcomes.