Nontraditional Cardiac Rehabilitation in Korean Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

PURPOSE: This pilot investigation sought to compare outcomes including depression, anxiety, stress, mindful awareness, and exercise capacity between exercise-focused cardiac rehabilitation (ECR) and meditation-focused cardiac rehabilitation (MCR) programs for patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) who had percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). DESIGN: A nonrandomized pretest-posttest design was employed. METHODS: Two different interventions (ECR vs. MCR) were implemented with participants of each group for 12 weeks. Questionnaires assessing depression, anxiety, stress, and mindful awareness and measures of peak VO2 were completed before and after the 12-week interventions. FINDINGS: Thirteen patients completed the cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs. Meditation-focused cardiac rehabilitation was associated with significantly greater reductions in depression as compared to ECR; there were no significant differences between the two groups on other outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: The MCR program has similar effects to improve the physical and psychological outcomes, compared with the ECR program. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: There is potential for patients with CAD to participate in and benefit from nontraditional CR programs, and such CR could play a role in secondary prevention of CAD.