Gender Difference in Acute Myocardial Infarction Patients Receiving Phase 1 Cardiac Rehabilitation

Purpose: The effects of gender difference on the pathogenesis, epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of cardiovascular diseases have been widely examined. In addition, gender differences influence cardiac rehabilitation; however, few studies have investigated the effect of gender difference on phase 1 cardiac rehabilitation patients. Therefore, this study explored gender difference in acute myocardial infarction patients who received phase 1 cardiac rehabilitation based on data collected from the National Health Insurance Research Database. For our analysis, we focused on the age distribution, comorbidities, and medical treatment of these patients. The study results are expected to serve as a reference for cardiac rehabilitation staff when developing training programs for patients. Method: Data spanning from 1998 to 2011 were collected from the inpatient rehabilitation profiles in the database. We defined acute myocardial infarction according to the primary diagnostic code 410 of the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, and targeted inpatients who received cardiac rehabilitation treatment. We analyzed the age difference, proportion of elderly people, Charlson comorbidity index score, and proportion of other comorbidities in patients of both genders. Results: We collected data spanning from 1998 to 2011 on 8189 patients who were hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction and who received phase 1 cardiac rehabilitation treatment. The average age of the patients was 65.65 ± 12.59 years. Among the patients, 4475 (54.64%) were elderly patients aged 65 years or older, and 1032 (12.6%) were aged 80 years or older. Regarding gender difference, the male patients accounted for most of the population, with a total number of 6266 (76.52%), and their average age was lower than that of the female patients (64.36 ± 12.79 y vs 69.85±10.90 y, p ＜ .0001). Among the female patients, the proportion of elderly people was high (70.31% vs 49.84%, p ＜ .0001), and the condition of comorbidities was severe. Regarding the Charlson comorbidities, common diseases included diabetes (39.36%), congestive heart failure (25.83%), cerebrovascular disease (10.89%), chronic lung disease (7.64%), and moderate or severe kidney disease (7.31%). The proportion of male patients with chronic lung disease was higher than that of female patients. In addition,the proportion of female patients with congestive heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, rheumatic disease, diabetes and its complications, and kidney disease was higher than that of male patients. Conclusion: This study adopted data from the National Health Insurance Research Database and analyzed gender difference in acute myocardial infarction patients who received cardiac rehabilitation. The