Cardiac rehabilitation in patients with heart failure and diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Over the past decades, cardiac rehabilitation has had a spectacular evolution, from the mere monitoring of the patients' return to physical activity to a multidisciplinary approach focused on patient education, individualized physical exercise, changes in cardiovascular risk factors and, not least, an improvement in patient quality of life. Heart failure represents an important public health problem, and the association of this disease with diabetes mellitus significantly reduces prognosis in these patients, the two disorders potentiating each other. Recent data demonstrate a significant benefit of cardiac rehabilitation in patients with diabetes mellitus and heart failure, with important effects in reducing mortality, increasing exercise capacity and improving symptoms. Unfortunately, cardiac rehabilitation is generally underused, most probably due to the lack of awareness and low adherence of patients, as well as due to insufficiently developed programs at national level.

Quality of life – an important parameter of cardiac rehabilitation in heart failure patients

“…However, clinical trials have shown that this disabling condition has a modifiable course and a large potential for improving using cardiac rehabilitation programs. These programs vary but in order for them to be efficient they need to be multidisciplinary and comprehensive, similar to rehabilitation programs for other conditions such as diabetes [9,10]. Their goals are to recover (and restore) the physical, social and mental well-being, thus improving the outcomes and correcting the risk factors that influene the incidence (and outcome) of cardiovascular diseases [11,12].…”