Prevention programmes help heart patients

A variety of secondary prevention programmes, even the ones lacking an exercise component, can improve the health outcomes of people with coronary artery disease. Previous reports have shown a survival benefit for supervised exercise programmes in heart attack survivors. However, researchers from the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, Canada found that it is unclear if other types of secondary prevention could also yield a benefit. The team investigated this topic by analysing data from trials published between 1966 and 2004. A total of 63 trials involving 21,295 patients with coronary artery disease were included in the analysis. The studies covered three main types of secondary prevention programmes: those with a structured exercise component, others that focused on risk factor education or counselling, and programmes that featured a combination of both. All three types of programmes cut the risk of death to a similar extent with reductions ranging from 12 to 28 percent. They also reduced the risk of having a heart attack by 14 to 38 percent. Further analysis showed that the programmes also improved functional status and quality of life, although the effect was modest. Although the interventions tested in these trials varied substantially and the trials enrolled highly selected study samples, secondary prevention programmes improve processes of care, coronary risk factor profiles, and functional status or quality of life. Further studies are needed to analyse the long-term clinical and economic outcomes of such programmes.