Educational Attainment and Cardiovascular Risk Among Patients in Cardiac Rehabilitation

We explored whether patient educational attainment impacted changes in cardiovascular risk factors during cardiac rehabilitation (CR). An observational study was conducted using participant data who completed phase 2 of CR from January 2011 to February 2020 at an academic medical center. The patient cohort was referred to CR after a major cardiac event or to outpatients with stable angina. Patients were excluded if they had no recorded food frequency assessment (FFA) score at CR orientation and graduation. The eligible sample of 1,307 patients were further divided: (1) low educational attainment group (<16 years formal education: high school, high school/general educational development, trade school, and associate's degree) and (2) high educational attainment group (>16 years formal education: bachelor's degree, some postgraduate, master's degree, PhD, and MD). The outcomes included measurements of the FFA, body composition, biophysical health, and psychologic distress. Most patients were male (71.2%), non-Hispanic White (82.2%), and married (73.0%). There were more patients with a high educational attainment (56.8%) than patients with a low educational attainment (43.2%). All measured cardiovascular markers improved after CR for both education level groups. The change in mean FFA score (0.163, p = 0.11) and Brief Symptom Inventory-53 global severity index score (0.422, p = 0.34) did not differ significantly. We observed an improvement in cardiovascular risk measures upon CR participation. These improvements were not limited to high educational attainment patients because we found few differences in the change of risk between the 2 groups. Future studies should continue investigating the impact of education on cardiovascular outcomes as an important social determinant of health.