Rural cardiac rehabilitation: a 20-year success story

Data are lacking on long-term participation in a clinically supervised cardiac rehabilitation program in a rural setting. We sought to determine whether there were sustained improvements in physiologic measures and discover what restorative and deteriorative processes took place over time.

We retrospectively analyzed the records of patients who were enrolled for a least 1 year in the Healthy Hearts Cardiac Rehabilitation Program. Data from stress tests were tracked for up to 18 years to determine whether there were any sustained improvements and what factors were associated with restorative and deteriorative processes.

We analyzed data from 85 participants. The mean age of the participants was 72 years, and the mean length of participation was 8 years. Duration of stress testing significantly (p < 0.01) increased by a mean of 15% from the first year to the second year, with a corresponding increase in estimated metabolic equivalent of task (MET) level (Cohen d = 0.82). The increase in duration was sustained into the ninth year, with an overall increase of 35% compared with the first year of testing. After the ninth year, the duration and estimated MET levels declined.

Participants in the cardiac rehabilitation program demonstrated improved duration of stress testing, and stable rate-pressure product, blood pressure and resting heart rate during long-term participation in the program.