Intensive Cardiac Rehabilitation Attenuates the Gender Gap in Cardiac Rehabilitation Participation

Traditional cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs historically have had considerable gender gaps in CR outcomes. Intensive-Cardiac-Rehabilitation (ICR) has nonexercise components such as stress management, peer support and diet modification, in addition to exercise, which may reduce barriers to CR completion. However, there is a paucity of data in ICR outcomes based on gender. We conducted a nationwide retrospective cohort study of 15,613 patients enrolled in 46 Ornish-ICR programs across the United States from January 2016 to December 2020 and compared ICR physical and psychological outcomes in women vs men. Primary endpoints were depression scores (CESD), health status (SF-36 physical and mental composite-scores) and exercise minutes per week. Of 15,613 ICR participants who participated in the program, 6788 (44%) were women. ICR completion rates were 64.7% overall and nearly equal between men and women (63.3% women vs 65.9% men). There were a few small differences in outcomes after ICR completion: women had slightly more improvement in depression scores (women: -6.10 ± 8.79, 49.6% reduction vs men: -4.92 ± 7.80, 46.4% reduction; P < 0.01) and SF-36 physical (women: 5.95 ± 6.86 vs men: 5.28 ± 6.71, P < 0.01) and SF-36 mental (women: 5.76 ± 8.11 vs men: 4.60 ± 7.33, P < 0.01) composite scores than men. There was no significant difference in exercise-minutes per week between the 2 groups. ICR attenuates the gender gap in CR completion. Further, of the completers, women achieved slightly higher depression and quality-of-life improvements compared to men. As such, ICR can be a good option to reduce gender-based differences in CR participation.