Cardiac Rehabilitation
Cardiac rehabilitation, is a customized outpatient program of exercise and education. It is designed to help improve your health and help you recover from a heart attack, other forms of heart disease or surgery to treat heart disease.
It involves exercise training, emotional support and education about lifestyle changes to reduce your heart disease risk, such as eating a heart-healthy diet, keeping a healthy weight and quitting smoking.
Goals of Cardiac Rehabilitation include teaching patients:
- To exercise properly and safely, to regain strength, preventing your condition from worsening
- To maintain a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.
- To manage stress.
- To feel good about and sure of yourself.
- To decrease your risk factors for heart disease.
You may benefit from cardiac rehabilitation if your medical history includes:
Heart attack
Coronary artery disease
Heart failure
Peripheral artery disease
Chest pain (angina)
Cardiomyopathy
Certain congenital heart diseases
Coronary artery bypass surgery
Angioplasty and stents
Heart or lung transplant
Heart valve repair or replacement
Pulmonary hypertension
The Three Stages of Cardiac Rehabilitation:
This is a program for patients while they are in the hospital. It is highly supervised. Patients are prescribed a tailored exercise program and are monitored while they exercise.
This is a program that is prescribed for patients who have left the hospital but still need some supervision and monitoring while they exercise. The program is tailored to meet the patient’s individual needs.
This is a program that is developed for patients who are well enough to exercise on their own, monitoring their own progress.