Clinical Efficacy of а Medical Centre- and Home-based Cardiac Rehabilitation Program for Patients with Coronary Heart Disease After Coronary Bypass Graft Surgery.

BACKGROUND

Rehabilitation measures are crucial for maintaining clinical benefits of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery. We evaluated the clinical efficacy of a medical centre- and home-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) for patients after CABG in an out-patient setting.

METHODS

The study included 36 male patients 3-8 weeks after CABG that were randomly assigned to either study or control group. Patients from the study group performed a 60 min excercise in controlled setting 3 times a week for 4 months followed by home-based excercise later on, while patients from the control group only received a recommendation to perform the excercise at home in an uncontrolled setting. Total duration of the follow-up was 12 months.

RESULTS

Physical endurance in the study group increased by 32.6% (p <0.05) in comparison to baseline after 4 months, and was maintained at this level after 12 months, while in the control group, an improvement of 9.8% (p <0.05) was observed after 12 months. Moreover, patients from the study group demonstrated a stable level of such risk factors as blood total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, while in the control group, these parameters increased by 10.2% (p <0.05) and 15.6% (p <0.05) respectively by the end of follow-up. Controlled medical centre-based exercise resulted in improvement of patients' quality of life and reduction of cardiovascular complications (11.1% against 39.2% in the control group).

CONCLUSION

The integral (medical centre and home-based) stage III CR program after CABG helped reducing cardiovascular risk factors, and improved clinical parameters and functional capacity of patients.