[Cardiological rehabilitation--a chance of returning to work]

According to the definition of the World Health Organization (WHO) "rehabilitation is a comprehensive and coordinated application of medical, social, educational and occupational measures to adapt a sick person to new life and to assist in gaining the best possible physical fitness". With respect to patients with cardiovascular diseases, the significance of comprehensive cardiologic rehabilitation is particularly emphasized. Return to work is by some authors perceived as a marker of rehabilitation efficiency. At the 8th World Rehabilitation Congress held in Dublin in May 2004, Perk (Sweden) reviewed the literature addressing the issue of returning to work. Over the recent seventy years, 460 publications devoted to this topic have been published. They mainly focus on the proportion of persons who return to work after myocardial infarction, percutaneous angioplasty of coronary arteries or implantation of aortic-coronary stents as well as on factors contributing to this success. It has been revealed that rehabilitation is one of numerous factors. Interestingly, socioeconomic and psychological, but not medical, factors play the major role in assuring return to work. There are also other factors which play a role, such as age < 50 years, education, social support, physical efficiency, disease perception, work satisfaction, absence of clinical symptoms, depression, fear, relations between the management and employees, place of residence (rural or urban area), economic status, sense of disability, waiting time for surgical procedure (period shorter than 3 months increases the frequency of returning to work). The number of studies providing evidence that rehabilitation enhances a chance of returning to work is rather limited. The authors review the state-of-the-art in this area based on the available literature.