Research

Mixed

Exercise-based rehabilitation for heart failure significantly reduces hospital admissions and improves health-related quality of life, with no increase in short-term mortality.

If you have heart failure, engaging in a structured exercise program is one of the most effective ways to reduce your risk of being hospitalized and to feel better in your daily life. It is safe and does not increase your risk of death in the short term. Look for a supervised cardiac rehabilitation program that tailors the intensity to your ability.

WeakSupportsHIGH confidence
Compared with control, exercise training reduced the rate of overall... and HF specific hospitalisation... Exercise also resulted in a clinically important improvement... in the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure questionnaire... exercise-based rehabilitation does not increase or decrease the risk of all-cause mortality in the short term (up to 12-months’ follow-up)
Rod S Taylor et al. · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2014

Why this rating

This is a Cochrane Systematic Review of 33 RCTs with 4740 participants, representing the highest level of evidence.

Source

Exercise-based rehabilitation for heart failure

Rod S Taylor et al. · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2014

DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd003331.pub4

Meta-analysis · 33 studiesCited 342×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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