• Carlo Vigorito, Raffaele Antonelli Incalzi, Domenico Acanfora, Niccolò Marchionni, Francesco Fattirolli, and Gruppo Italiano di Cardiologia Riabilitativa e Preventiva.
• Dipartimento di Medicina Clinica, Scienze Cardiovascolari ed Immunologiche, Area Funzionale di Riabilitazione Cardiologica, Università degli Studi Federico II, Napoli. vigorito@unina.it
• Monaldi Arch Chest Dis. 2003 Mar 1;60(1):25-39.

AbstractCardiac rehabilitation has gained widespread acceptance as an integral component in the management of patients with several forms of cardiac disease. Nevertheless, the benefits deriving from cardiac rehabilitation, and the most appropriate modalities of delivering this treatment, are still uncertain in patients older than 75 years who, beyond a high morbidity and mortality from ischemic heart disease, are characterized by frequent comorbidities, disability, psychological and emotional abnormalities, and cognitive impairment. All these conditions may concur to limit physical exercise capacity, are frequent causes of physical disability and deteriorated quality of life, and are a barrier to enrolling older patients into standardized rehabilitation programs. On the other hand, available evidence on cardiac rehabilitation in older patients derive from non homogeneous patient series, which are not fully representative of the average patient older than 75 years, whose peculiar clinical characteristics are largely different from those of subjects in 65-75 years age range. Therefore, the scientific community should design new strategies to promote recruitment of older individuals into cardiac rehabilitation programs. This can be attained by both spreading the results of beneficial effects of cardiac rehabilitation in advanced age and by precisely identifying the goals, as well as by defining assessment, rehabilitation and follow-up protocols targeting the peculiar characteristics of old and very old patients. This article offers a concise review of available evidence on cardiac rehabilitation in older patients, and a series of recommendations that may be useful in the clinical practice. In the first, introductory section, we describe the main components of comprehensive, cardiac rehabilitation programs of older patients (namely: physical exercise based on both endurance and muscle strength training; the role of multidisciplinary approach integrated into a secondary prevention strategy; interventions in the emotional and cognitive domain), as they result from an extensive analysis of the literature. On this regard, attention will be put to define the specific characteristics by which reported interventions may, or may not, have conformed to the many peculiarities of older individuals. In the further section, results of cardiac rehabilitation of older patients are described organizing them according to the different outcomes attained, with illustration of the effects on cardiocirculatory response to physical exercise, quality of life, body composition, lipid profile, arterial blood pressure control, myocardial ischemia, progression of cardiac failure, neuropsychological and cognitive profile, mortality and morbidity, and cost/benefit analysis. Also in this section, particular attention will be devoted to select and illustrate those results that are most valuable in the management and care of the oldest old. General principles that, based on available evidence, should guide the design of cardiac rehabilitation programs and the prescription of exercise to older cardiac patients, will be detailed next. In particular, we will underline the key role of a comprehensive, preliminary multidimensional and multidisciplinary assessment--whose basic components will also be given in detail-, and will describe the guidelines to design the rehabilitation program, the several methods of training to be used in the different phases of the rehabilitation program, and the most valuable and correct methods to assess both short- and long-term results. The general principles of specific rehabilitation protocols that can be used in older patients will be also described. In this context, we will detail the specific goals and instruments used in the preliminary assessment of cardiocirculatory response to physical exercise, as well as of nutritional habits and nutritional status, physical status and motion capacity, neuropsychological and cognitive profile, quality of life and possible functional limitations. In the last section, educational interventions, and physical endurance and muscle strength training programs, will be described. In this description, particular attention will be devoted to the concept of tailoring the rehabilitative program to the results of preliminary assessment. Indeed, the presence of comorbidity or of significant functional limitations should imply the design of alternative rehabilitation programs, which should be based on strongly individualized modalities as well as intensity and duration of physical exercise training. In summary, this article is intended to encourage and help the cardiological community to recruit even the oldest old into cardiac rehabilitation programs, through an adjustment and individualization process of the rehabilitative pathway that should be based on the enclosed recommendations and guidelines. This could reduce the otherwise high exclusion rate of older patients, who are frequently deprived of the potential benefits from cardiac rehabilitation consisting, at least, in improved functional capacity, neuropsychological and emotional profile, and quality of life.

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