Background: Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) improves health-related quality of life and exercise capacity in patients with heart failure (HF). However, CR efficacy in patients with HF who are elderly, frail, or have HF with preserved ejection fraction remains unclear. We examined whether participation in multidisciplinary outpatient CR is associated with long-term survival and rehospitalization in patients with HF, with subgroup analysis by age, sex, comorbidities, frailty, and HF with preserved ejection fraction.
Methods: This multicenter retrospective cohort study was performed in patients hospitalized for acute HF at 15 hospitals in Japan, 2007 to 2016. The primary outcome (composite of all-cause mortality and HF rehospitalization after discharge) and secondary outcomes (all-cause mortality and HF rehospitalization) were analyzed in outpatient CR program participants versus nonparticipants.
Results: Of the 3277 patients, 26% (862) participated in outpatient CR. After propensity matching for potential confounders, 1592 patients were included (n=796 pairs), of which 511 had composite outcomes (223 [14%] all-cause deaths and 392 [25%] HF rehospitalizations, median 2.4-year follow-up). Hazard ratios associated with CR participation were 0.77 (95% CI, 0.65-0.92) for composite outcome, 0.67 (95% CI, 0.51-0.87) for all-cause mortality, and 0.82 (95% CI, 0.67-0.99) for HF-related rehospitalization. CR participation was also associated with numerically lower rates of composite outcome in patients with HF with preserved ejection fraction or frail patients.
Conclusions: Outpatient CR participation was associated with substantial prognostic benefit in a large HF cohort regardless of age, sex, comorbidities, frailty, and HF with preserved ejection fraction.
Keywords: cardiac rehabilitation; comorbidity; frailty; heart failure; survival.