Benefit of cardiac rehabilitation in women: An experience of French centre

Abstract

Cardiac rehabilitation consists of measures that allow patients to recover their functional capacity through physical exercise and secondary prevention measures. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of cardiac rehabilitation in French women compared to men. It's a retrospective study included 1700 patients admitted in cardiac rehabilitation centre of Léopold-Bellan hospital, Paris, France. All of them had clinical examination, an electrocardiogram, echocardiography, biological test and Ergospirometry. We included 439 women (group 1) and 1261men (group 2). The average age of patients was 62.8 ± 12.1 years in group 1 and 63.1 ± 12.4 years in group 2, they had more than three cardiovascular risk factors, hypertension and dyslipidemia was more frequent in women, they were overweight with an BMI at 28.9 ± 7.9 kg/m 2 in group 1 and 26.2 ± 7.3 kg/m 2 in group 2, clinical examination was normal. Transthoracic Echocardiography showed preserved Left-Ventricular ejection fraction (52.6 ± 12.9% in group 1 and 53.3 ± 12.4% in group 2). After 20 sessions of cardiac rehabilitation, patients showed lower BMI, especially in women (26.4 ± 5.3 kg/m 2 ),a significant improvement in the maximal work load, from 68.2 ± 25.6 to 91.2 ± 35.2 watt ( P = 0.01) in women and from 90.43 ± 34.1 to 110.37 ± 40.7 watts in men, a significant improvement in VO2max, from 17.1 ± 3.6 to 21.5 ± 6.3 mL/kg/min ( P = 0.01) in women and from 20.5 ± 5.1 to 23.2 ± 6.9 mL/kg/min ( P = 0.02) in men. This study demonstrates that cardiac rehabilitation is benefit for both men and women, to improve their exercise capacity and reduce their cardio vascular risk factors especially in women.