Including Patients With Stroke in Cardiac Rehabilitation: BARRIERS AND FACILITATORS

More than 13 million cases of stroke are occurring annually worldwide. Approximately a quarter of these strokes are recurrent strokes, and there is compelling evidence of the benefit of supervised exercise and risk factor modification programming in the secondary prevention of these strokes. However, there is insufficient time in inpatient and outpatient stroke rehabilitation for focused exercise interventions. General lifestyle interventions on their own, without guidance and supervision, are insufficient for improving physical activity levels. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a setting where cardiac patients, and increasingly stroke patients, receive comprehensive secondary prevention programming, including structured exercise. Unfortunately, not all CR programs accept referrals for people following a stroke and for those that do, only a few patients participate. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to report the barriers and facilitators to improving linkage between health services, with a focus on increasing access to CR. In the next two decades, it is projected that there will be a marked increase in stroke prevalence globally. Therefore, there is an urgent need to create cross-program collaborations between hospitals, outpatient stroke rehabilitation, CR, and community programs. Improving access and removing disparities in access to evidence-based exercise treatments would positively affect the lives of millions of people recovering from stroke.