Is cardiac rehabilitation useful in our older population?

Introduction Cardiac rehabilitation programs (CRP) are recommended in patients with heart failure and ischemic heart disease with a class I indication. Nevertheless, we know only one third of these patients undertake them, mainly because it’s a limited resource and not available in all centers. In some centers, for this reason, it’s limited to younger patients, in which we could expect a greater benefit. Moreover, older age has been identified as an obstacle for patients to attend these programs. Purpose To compare the results of the senior patients (defined as 70 years old or older) in our center to our general results. Methods A retrospective analysis of our patients before and after cardiac rehabilitation program was made comparing both groups using SPSS Statistics v23. Results Both groups had similar characteristics before the program, except for active smoking, which was significantly more frequent in patients younger than 70, and arterial hypertension which was more frequent in patients over 70. Several parameters were analyzed in our population before and after CRP in all patients, and in our patients aged 70 or older. In the first analysis, significant differences were obtained in overweight, glycemic and lipid control, NTproBNP reduction and LVEF. Moreover, the was a significant improvement in functional capacity, quality of life (measured by SF-36 scale) and anxiety. When analyzing only our senior patients, we observed improvement in most of anthropometric, functional and quality of live parameters, and lab results, even though, probably due to a lower sample, these were only significant in BMI, HbA1c, LDL, NTproBNP, LVEF, functional capacity and quality of life measured by SF-36. Conclusions CRP improves clinical, analytical, and functional parameters, and is clearly beneficial in patients of 70 years or more. Therefore, they should be offered to perform it with the same indications as younger patients. Unfortunately, these patients’ assistance is also limited by usually further from hospital residence (rural population) and a frequent caregiver role and might need a higher support in order to assure their enrollment in these programs.