Behavioural interventions to increase the physical activity of cardiac patients: a review

To examine the behaviour change techniques that have been used in physical activity (PA) interventions to increase PA during and after completing cardiac rehabilitation (CR) and for patients who do not attend CR (non-CR). PubMed, PsychINFO, SPORTdiscus, Web of Science, Prowler and Cochrane databases were searched to identify studies that described an intervention delivered to adults in the CR and non-CR contexts that focused solely on promoting PA. Twenty-three studies (14 post-CR and nine non-CR) were included in this review. Findings showed that interventions can increase PA; however, there were notable differences across CR contexts in their purpose, the participant demographics, and some of the behaviour change techniques used. Techniques shown to be most effective in the post-CR context were self-monitoring, setting specific goals, identifying barriers and developing plans for relapse prevention. In the non-CR context, unsupervised home-based interventions were shown to be effective at increasing PA, particularly when accompanied by follow-up prompts, general encouragement, specific goals set by the researcher and self-monitoring. Post-CR and non-CR interventions can result in improved PA outcomes; however, the research in this area is limited. More interventions are needed that target PA-only, particularly in the non-CR context.