Current Status of Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Regional Cardiocerebrovascular Centers in Korea.

Chul Kim,Sungju Jee,Kyung-Lim Joa,Jihee Kim,Jang Woo Lee,Won-Seok Kim,Heui Je Bang,Ae Ryoung Kim,Jae-Young Han,Oh Pum Kwon,Chung Reen Kim,Sora Baek,Jidong Sung,So Young Lee,Jong Hwa Lee

doi:10.3390/jcm10215079

Abstract

Regional Cardiocerebrovascular Centers (RCCs)—a Korean government initiative—seek to reduce medical gaps across regions, and their cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs are expected to model post-acute care for the Korean CR program. Accordingly, this study aimed to evaluate the current status of CR programs in the RCCs. We distributed surveys on the CR condition, activity, and barriers to 12 RCCs in different provinces. The results revealed significant gaps in the annual number of acute myocardial infarction admissions, and CR candidates, capacity, and density across the 12 RCCs. The CR capacity (50–500) and density (0.42–7.36) indicated particularly large gaps. Twelve RCCs had the necessary facilities, equipment and personnel for CR assessments and management, with high CR referral (97%) and patient education (78%) rates. However, the inpatient CR exercise training (56%) participation rate was inadequate, with much lower enrollment (47%) and adherence (17%) rates to the outpatient CR program and large differences across centers. Therefore, this study’s results will provide the evidence required to establish special national health strategies to overcome the CR barriers of patient, doctor/hospital, and policy factors for activating Korean CR programs.

Highlights

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality, morbidity, and healthcare costs in South Korea [1]
The following results are based on the responses to cardiac rehabilitation (CR)-GQ and Cardiac Rehabilitation-In Depth Questionnaire (CR-IDQ) from the
There were regional gaps in the CR practice rate when considering the number of ischemic heart disease and AMI

Summary

Introduction

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality, morbidity, and healthcare costs in South Korea [1]. Cardiovascular (CV) mortality has risen by 42.8% over the last decade. It has become the second leading cause of death in South Korea [2]. Most cases of CVD manifest clinically as an acute disease, they are chronic degenerative diseases that progress over a period of time. They need to be treated and managed as a chronic disease after discharge from the hospital [5]

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