Cardiac Rehabilitation: New Emphasis on Metabolic Disease

Abstract

Cardiac rehabilitation was developed in the mid-1970s as a mechanism to instruct and deliver exercise therapy to those having survived a recent acute coronary syndrome. Although the field of cardiac rehabilitation has a relatively short (40 years) history as evidence-based care for patients with cardiovascular disease, it continues to evolve. Changes in program scope have shifted the emphasis away from cardiac rehabilitation as a limited short-term intervention to one of a comprehensive secondary preventive strategy targeting the multiple medical, exercise, nutritional, and behavioral factors that place a patient at increased risk for a subsequent cardiac event.