Home-based cardiac rehabilitation: A review

Cardiac rehabilitation has positive effects on mortality, morbidity, quality of life and many cardiac risk factors. Cardiac rehabilitation is usually delivered within a hospital or ‘centre’ setting, however, home-based programmes may offer greater accessibility and choice to patients. While there have been fewer studies of home-based cardiac rehabilitation, the available data suggest that it is acceptable, safe and effective and has comparable results to hospital-based programmes. Furthermore, home-based cardiac rehabilitation results in longer-lasting maintenance of physical activity levels in patients compared with hospital programmes. It has the potential to be more cost-effective for patients who cannot easily access their local hospital or centre. Home-based cardiac rehabilitation may be particularly useful in patients in a remote or rural setting. Despite the options available and the evidence based benefits, the uptake of cardiac rehabilitation remains low. It is the responsibility of all cardiac health-care workers to ensure that the uptake of cardiac rehabilitation improves.