Fundamento: A COVID-19 afetou como as pessoas recebem atendimento de saúde para várias doenças, inclusive doenças cardiovasculares. Objetivos: Examinar as percepções dos participantes de reabilitação cardíaca (RC) sobre seus comportamentos em saúde e necessidades de informação durante a pandemia da COVID-19 no Brasil. Métodos: Neste estudo transversal, um questionário de 27 itens elaborado pelos investigadores foi administrado online a participantes de dois programas de RC. As perguntas incluíam letramento em saúde (LS; usando a Brief Health Literacy Screening Tool -Breve ferramenta de triagem de letramento em saúde), uso de tecnologia, percepções antes e durante a pandemia da COVID-19, e necessidades de informações. Foram usados coeficiente de correlação de Pearson, testes t pareados e ANOVA, conforme apropriado. Um p <0,05 foi considerado estatisticamente significativo para todos os testes. Resultados: No total, 159 (25,5%) participantes de RC responderam ao questionário. Desses, 89,9% tinham LS limitado ou marginal, e 96,2% relataram ter acesso à internet de casa. Os pacientes se preocupam principalmente com a saúde de sua família e própria, além de como o coronavírus é perigoso para sua saúde e como mudou seu estilo de vida. Os participantes perceberam que a qualidade de seus comportamentos em saúde diminuiu significativamente durante a pandemia. A pandemia também mudou as necessidades de informações dos participantes de RC, já que novas necessidades surgiram, tais como, controle de níveis de ansiedade, manter a motivação para levar uma vida saudável durante a pandemia, e como a COVID-19 pode afetar sua condição de saúde. Participantes com LS adequado perceberam significativamente a gravidade da doença e tinham significativamente mais acesso a informações do que os pacientes com LS limitado. Conclusões: Nossos resultados destacaram o impacto da pandemia nas percepções dos participantes de RC em relação a seus comportamentos em saúde e necessidades de informação, que podem ser influenciados pelos níveis de LS.

Hypertension (HP) contributes significantly to the high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), which are the main causes of mortality in the world. 1 It is believed that HP accounts for up to 7.6 million (12.8%) of total number of deaths each year. 2 Despite recent advances in the prevention and treatment of HP, the economic and health impacts of this condition have increased, with significant repercussions on public health worldwide. 3,4 In this regard, strategies for the mitigation and control of hypertension, such as moderate to high levels of physical activity (PA), are recommended as important

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This quasi-experimental study investigated the preliminary effects of a structured education intervention in a pooled sample of cardiovascular rehabilitation (CR) patients in Brazil. Recently enrolled (RE) and long-term enrolled (LTE) patients attended 12 weekly education sessions in addition to three weekly exercise sessions. Patients completed surveys assessing disease-related knowledge, physical activity, food intake, self-efficacy, and health literacy. Functional capacity was assessed by the 6-minutes walking test. All outcomes were assessed at pre-,post-CR, and 6-months follow-up. Bonferroni correction was applied. In total, 69 (69.7%) patients completed all three assessments. There were significant improvements in knowledge pre-to post-test in both subgroups (p < 0.001), and in functional capacity (p ≤ 0.001) and food intake (p ≤ 0.001) pre-to post-test in the RE subgroup. Post-test knowledge was correlated to physical activity, functional capacity and health literacy. This preliminary study suggests the importance of structured education for CR patients. A larger study using a randomized controlled design is needed to determine efficacy.

Study Objective: In cardiology, the reporting of interventions is insufficiently detailed to elicit replication. Specifically for cardiovascular rehabilitation (CVR) trials, the quality of the description of its exercise-based interventions (EBI) is poorly known. Our primary objective is to estimate the adherence of EBI of CVR trials to TIDieR reporting guideline. Secondarily, we tested whether the CVR setting would be associated with a better reporting, also exploring whether transparency and methodological characteristics could be related. Design and Setting: This cross-sectional study analyzed 96 trials with EBI published within CVR literature. For our primary objective, TIDieR reporting guideline was accounted as a reference to assess overall adherence of eligible RCTs. For our secondary objectives we used generalized estimating equations to point out (a) if intervention setting (eg, home-based vs. centre-based) was associated with intervention reporting, and (b) if trials transparency and methodological characteristics would be associated with intervention reporting. Results: On average, arms adequately reported 4.8/12 (SD=2.4) TIDieR items. 65.07% of our EBI arms failed to adequately report ≥ 6 TIDieR items. Three of 146 (2.05%) arms adhered to all 12 TIDieR items. Additionally, intervention setting was not associated with a better description. Conclusions: We concluded that EBIs in CVR lack to report fundamental aspects of the interventions to be replicated by third parties based on their reports.

The poor reporting quality of methods and outcomes is relatively recognized in the biomedical field. Its prevalence and implications have been studied in the cardiovascular rehabilitation literature but not so extensively in exercise-based trials. Our main objective was to cross-sectionally estimate the prevalence of both methodological and outcome reporting items in CVR trials with EBI. We also searched for associations (secondary outcomes) between (1) the effect size reported and the direction of the primary outcome, as well as (2) associations with the frequency of Spin. We cross-sectionally screened the sample of eligible trials dated between 2017 and 2021, and then collected the prevalence of methodological and outcome characteristics, independent and blinded manner. Our study shows that there was an insufficient reporting of methods and outcomes. Also, studies reporting effect size measures had a lower chance of Spin. The primary outcome effect size was not reported in 35% of the studies SES. However, more than 2/3 of the sample (69%) had a statement in the discussion or conclusion sections mentioning clinical relevance or meaningful benefit of the statistically significant results. Selective outcome reporting has important implications for translating science into practice, once not so threatens the validity of an intervention effectiveness, but also frustrates the use of its evidence in meta-analyses.