Effects of the Implementation of a Multifaceted Cardiac Rehabilitation Programme

Background: Various studies show that multidisciplinary rehabilitation programmes including physical training, nutritional counselling and risk factor management for patients with cardiac disease result in behavioural change and improve both quality of life and physical performance. To what extent these results can be translated into clinical practice is less well understood. Purpose: To measure changes in nutrition habits, smoking habits, wellbeing, self-perceived physical fitness and physical performance of patients with various cardiac diseases attending a multidisciplinary cardiac rehabilitation programme in a regional outpatient cardiological rehabilitation centre in Switzerland. To study variability of effects in female and elderly patients. Methods: 139 consenting patients (mean age: 61.9 years [±10.1], 119 [85.6%] male) attending a cardiac rehabilitation programme were asked to complete a questionnaire before and after a 3-month outpatient cardiac rehabilitation programme of 36 sessions. We also assessed physical performance before and after rehabilitation. We tested changes from baseline statistically and investigated whether the patients’ age and gender had an influence on the rehabilitation effects. Results: Patients reduced the intake of fatty food by 1.70 score points (95%CI: −2.06 to −1.28; p < 0.001) and increased their intake of healthy food by 2.23 score points (1.88 to 2.58, p < 0.001). We observed a significant reduction in the number of smokers (p < 0.001). Wellbeing increased by 1.39 score points (1.11 to 1.67, p < 0.001) and self-perceived physical fitness increased by 2.97 score points (2.45 to 3.49, p < 0.001). The 6-minute walking test increased by 118.82 metres (105.46 to 132.20, p < 0.001) and exercise capacity increased by 0.28 watt/bodyweight (kg) (0.22 to 0.34, p < 0.001). Elderly patients tended to be less willing to change nutritional behaviour. Gender had no influence on changes in the five domains investigated. Conclusions: Our multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme can be successfully implemented in clinical practice and has similar beneficial effects to those reported in clinical trials. Our results encourage broad implementation of such programmes in clinical practice.