Cardiac rehabilitation

Cardiac rehabilitation is provided for people following diagnosis of a range of cardiac pathologies and to aid recovery after cardiac surgery. The programmes provided cost an estimated 34 m Pounds a year. However, there is wide variation within the programmes and many do not conform to current guidance. Drawn from the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination's latest Effective Health Care bulletin, this article summarises the literature on the effectiveness of cardiac rehabilitation. Its principal findings are that services do not always target all the appropriate client groups and do not always employ the most effective approaches.