[Secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation in Spain. Section of Preventive Cardiology]

Secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation constitute both a unique strategy in the prevention of coronary heart disease. Comprehensive cardiac care must be considered one of the main objectives and the Spanish cardiologists dedicate less attention to it than to other cardiological procedures. Several international recommendations on secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation have been published during the last years, and both strategies have shown a good cost-benefit ratio. Several measures for secondary prevention, like reducing cholesterol levels in hypercholesterolaemic patients, and the treatment with aspirin, have also shown a decrease in CHD mortality and total mortality. Cardiac rehabilitation programmes improved some sociolaboral outcomes. In spite of those facts, the Spanish cardiologists pay little attention to secondary prevention and cardiac rehabilitation, as the results of two recently distributed questionnaires show.