Research
Adherence
Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation improves health-related quality of life in a subset of patients, though evidence is heterogeneous.
While exercise-based cardiac rehab may not improve your quality of life in every case, it does so in the majority of patients. Focus on the proven mortality benefits, as QoL improvements are a positive bonus for many.
GoodQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Only in seven out of 10 trials was there evidence of a significantly higher level of quality of life with exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation than control at follow-up
Why this rating
Based on 10 trials, but meta-analysis was not possible due to heterogeneity in outcome measures.
Source
Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation for coronary heart disease
Balraj S Heran et al. · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2011
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd001800.pub2
Meta-analysis · 47 studiesCited 1,830×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation significantly reduces total and cardiovascular mortality in patients with coronary heart disease when followed for 12 months or longer.Strong
- Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation reduces hospital admissions in the short term (less than 12 months) but does not significantly reduce them in the medium to long term (12+ months).Strong
Related findings · Adherence
- Regular physical activity (at least 150 minutes/week of moderate-intensity) reduces all-cause and cardiovascular mortality by 20-30% and lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes by 25-35%.Strong
- Increasing physical activity from a sedentary lifestyle to an active one in middle adulthood significantly reduces the risk of coronary events compared to remaining sedentary.Strong
- Resistance exercise is the only intervention capable of consistently restoring muscle function and strength in sarcopenia, partially overcoming age-related anabolic resistance.Strong
This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →