ROME – A multiweek program of cardiac rehabilitation is as beneficial in elderly patients with chronic heart failure as it is in younger heart failure patients, according to a review of 243 patients at one Belgium center.
"Although they have lower exercise capacity at baseline, older patients have at least as much benefit from an exercise program as younger patients with chronic heart failure," Ms. Sofie Pardaens* reported in a poster at the annual meeting of the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation.
A second analysis by Ms. Pardaens, a researcher at Ghent (Belgium) University, and her associates, reported in a separate poster, showed that a prolonged cardiac rehabilitation program was as effective in patients recently discharged from a heart failure hospitalization as it was in patients following cardiac surgery or after an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) event.
Mitchel L. Zoler/IMNG Medical Media
Ms. Sofie Pardaens
Their assessment of cardiac rehabilitation relative to a patient’s age included 243 patients who participated in a rehabilitation program at the University of Ghent, who had chronic heart failure, and who had an amino-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide value of at least 400 pg/mL, a level very suggestive of heart failure (Circulation 2011;123:2015-9). The group included 43 patients (18%) who were at least 75 years old (average, 78 years) and 68 patients younger than 60 (average, 51 years), with the remaining 132 patients evenly distributed across the range of 60-74 years old.
All participants had just been hospitalized, for an ACS event, cardiac surgery, or heart failure.
The hospital-based rehabilitation program combined aerobic and strength training, and was designed to bring a patient’s heart rate to his anaerobic threshold during each session. Sessions occurred two or three times a week, and the full program included 45 sessions over a period of 4-5 months. The patients studied averaged 34 sessions each; patients aged 75 or older averaged 32 sessions each, while those younger than 60 averaged 35 sessions each.
The researchers measured peak exercise capacity using cardiopulmonary exercise testing at baseline and at the end of the rehabilitation session sequence, and found that the 16% average level of improvement among patients at least 75 years old closely matched the average 19% improvement among the patients younger than 60, and the 17% average improvement among everyone else, Ms. Pardaens and her associates reported. All age groups also showed similar improvements in their average ventilatory equivalence ratio, as well as their average 6-minute walk distance; however, the 29% average increased distance among patients younger than 60 years significantly exceeded the 19% average increase among those aged 75 or older.
The group’s second analysis focused on the 371 patients who underwent cardiac rehabilitation at the University of Ghent during January 2010 through May 2012 from among the 1,253 patients hospitalized during this period for an acute coronary syndrome event, cardiac surgery, or heart failure. In this pool of more than 1,000 patients who were potentially eligible to participate, only 30% actually enrolled in the rehabilitation program. The cardiac rehabilitation program again involved two to three sessions per week, with a goal for patients to complete 45 sessions within 5 months.
The sign-up rate for rehabilitation lagged even more among the 428 patients from the larger group whose index hospitalization had been for heart failure, with 37 of the acute heart failure patients (9%) actually engaging in rehabilitation. Rehabilitation participation was highest, a 56% rate, among the 358 patients who had been hospitalized for cardiac surgery, with a 28% uptake rate among 467 patients who had an ACS event.
Despite the low, 9% uptake of cardiac rehabilitation in heart failure patients, their benefit from participation closely tracked the benefit seen in surgery and ACS patients. Improvement in peak exercise capacity over baseline at the end of rehabilitation averaged 19% in the heart failure patients, 17% in the ACS patients, and 24% in the surgery patients, differences that were not statistically significant, reported Ms. Pardaens. All three subgroups also had similar average improvements in their 6-minute walk distance, which rose by an average of 21% in the heart failure patients and by averages of 27% and 28% in the other two subgroups.
Based on the efficacy but low usage of cardiac rehabilitation, future research should examine ways to boost its use by heart failure patients, concluded Ms. Pardaens.
Ms. Pardaens and her associates said they had no relevant financial disclosures.
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*Correction 6/28/13: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported researcher Sofie Pardaens' title. She is currently studying for her PhD in the department of internal medicine at Ghent University.